Roman Catholic Church Of St Mary

The Roman Catholic Church of St Mary, located on Lord Street, was built between 1866 and 1867, designed by architect Edward Welby Pugin and constructed by builder T A Drummond of Fleetwood at a cost of £4,000. The church features rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings and a steep pitched slate roof. Its polygonal apse and aisles with lean-to roofs are notable, as are the aisle windows which contain two cusped lights and an inscribed cinquefoil in bar tracery, complete with hoodmoulds. The clerestory windows are oculi adorned with quatrefoils of bar tracery and hoodmoulds. The apse showcases three grouped lancets with bar tracery and linked hoodmoulds on each side at the clerestory level. The west end has two groups of three lancets with bar tracery and hoodmoulds on the ground floor, above which are two three-light windows featuring inscribed cinquefoils in bar tracery, with a statue of the Virgin under an aedicule in between. The gable window consists of three lights separated by colonnettes, and the aisles are highlighted by very tall lancets. The porch has a pitched slate roof and a coped gable, with three grouped lancets featuring bar tracery and hoodmoulds on each side, along with buttresses and a moulded two-centred arched doorway.

Inside, the nave arcade consists of four bays, while the chancel has two bays, both supported by two-centred arches on cylindrical piers with simple capitals. Transverse arches lead to the aisles, which have steep-pitched wooden roofs, with painted details above the apse and lean-to roofs over the aisles. The apse arcade is internally supported on colonnettes with foliage capitals and hoodmoulds. An organ gallery at the west end is supported on a shallow segmental arch with paired columns at each end. The interior features a finely carved alabaster pulpit with a cast iron rail for the stairs, a sanctuary rail, and an altar. An elaborate Perpendicular reredos with Purbeck colonnettes and a tall steepled and flying buttressed canopy over the tabernacle is present, along with smaller reredoses in the side chapels. The church also contains good contemporary furniture and stained glass.