Church Of St Chad

Church of St Chad, built 1869-71 by the Lancaster architects Paley & Austin. The building is constructed in a transitional Romanesque and Gothic style, with coursed red sandstone and steep red tile roofs.

The church comprises a tall nave with aisles and clerestoreys, a crossing tower, north organ loft, south chapel, and short square-ended sanctuary. North and south porches approach via steps.

The west end features a single pointed light terminating each aisle, with three pointed lights below three stepped tall lancets at the centre. The south-west porch has a Norman entrance aperture with a statue in the gable niche; the inner doorway is ornately Romanesque with paired doors and decorative ironwork. The north porch is similar but blocked. The nave extends for six bays. The aisles contain single windows with drip mouldings, while the clerestory windows are single in the westernmost bay and otherwise paired beneath a continuous string course; all are pointed lancets.

A three-stage crossing tower with blunt saddleback roof rises above the intersection. It has paired pointed windows in the lower stage. On the north and south sides each, one pointed belfry arch contains paired louvred apertures; on the east and west sides, two arches contain the same. An octagonal stair shaft with slated conical roof stands on the south-east corner. Massive buttressing walls with steep tiled copings and gabled buttresses descend from the tower's corner buttresses on the north and south sides. These walls form the south chapel, which has a round window and moulded pointed doorway, and the north organ loft, identical in design. The sanctuary displays blind arcading, three pointed lancets, and a round window in the gable, with paired tapering and weathered corner buttresses.

The interior features pointed aisle arcades with plain stylised Corinthian capitals to round columns on the south side and octagonal columns on the north. A segmentally vaulted ceiling extends across the clerestory. An early Norman red sandstone font stands at the west end, carved with figures including Adam and Eve and St. Michael spearing the serpent, which forms a rope moulding below. The stem and base carry fat serpentine mouldings. Pews are arranged throughout, accessed centrally and at the walls.

Very tall chancel arches span the crossing, above which a rib-vaulted stone ceiling rises high inside the tower. A circular stone pulpit stands to the left, with a reading desk to the right. The raised chancel features encaustic floor tiles. An 1907 organ occupies the north chapel, with carved wooden choir stalls on both sides leading to the sanctuary. The sanctuary contains blind arcading, an aumbry, and tripartite sedilia. A sumptuous opus sectile reredos mural of 1898 by Henry Holiday spans the east wall, depicting the Last Supper with a surround of angels and virtues.

The stained glass, dating from 1871-1897, comprises three west windows depicting scenes from the life of Christ, south aisle windows with saints, north aisle windows with women from the Old Testament, four corner windows of Archangels, and four east windows. This forms an unusual complete set of church windows by Holiday. The central western lancet depicting Jacob's Ladder is unsigned but may be by H. G. Hiller.

A cross in the churchyard marks the site of the chapel of 1766 which this church replaced. A lych-gate provides entrance to the graveyard, whose gable-coped walls were reportedly built using stone from the old chapel.

By tradition, a church has stood on this site since around 870 AD. The current building was constructed for the 4th Earl of Sefton to replace the 1766 chapel, which itself had replaced an earlier structure of unknown date, possibly in the same location.

H. J. Austin joined E. G. Paley's Lancaster practice in 1868. Over the next 25 years they became the premier church architects in the North West of England, producing large numbers of nationally significant churches, many highly graded listed buildings. St. Chad's was one of their earliest collaborations; Pevsner considered it "one of their most powerful".

Henry Holiday (1839-1927) was an artist at the heart of the Arts and Crafts movement, a founder member of The Fifteen, the Art Workers' Guild, and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Primarily devoted to applied decorative art, he exhibited paintings and sculpture at the Royal Academy and became an influential force in British stained glass, rejecting medievalism in favour of modern aesthetic design. His work appears in many churches; the I. K. Brunel memorial window in Westminster Abbey is contemporaneous with the east windows at St. Chad's. He also designed murals for Worcester College chapel, Oxford, and for Bradford and Rochdale Town Halls, illustrated Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark', and following an 1890 trip to the United States and Canada, undertook commissions including the Robert E. Lee memorial in St. Paul's, Richmond, Virginia, and windows for Holy Trinity church, Manhattan, New York.

Opus sectile originally referred to designs produced in a similar manner to mosaic but using larger, more regular pieces. In the Victorian period, the term was also applied to a material created from ground waste coloured glass, suitable for painting. The process is believed to have been invented by James Powell and Sons, though it was named by Clayton and Bell. Using this material for traditional opus sectile work allowed painted detail to enhance its decorative quality and similarity to stained glass.

The Church of St. Chad, the Vicarage, Stables, Gate Piers, and Kirkby Hall Lodge form a group together.