Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Peter and attached presbytery

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and St Peter and attached presbytery

This Roman Catholic church was designed by Smith, Brown and Lowther of Hull and built in 1893–94. It is a Victorian gothic building, broadly Early English in style.

The church is constructed of red brick with Hoptonwood stone dressings and a Welsh slate roof with terracotta cresting. The building is orientated with its chancel at the south end and its main entrance front facing north. The nave has side aisles, and the chancel is flanked by side chapels. A presbytery adjoins the church to the east, connected by a shared enclosed porch. A church hall was later attached to the west of the church and is not included in the listing.

The architectural elaboration is concentrated on the north elevation facing the road, which forms the ecclesiastical west end. The nave is supported by angle buttresses that rise above the eaves as stone pinnacles, with the gable raised and stone coped, topped by a stone cross finial. Between the buttresses is the main entrance, featuring a moulded brick two-centred arch with a stone trefoil arch within, enclosed by a stone hoodmould with label stops. This entrance is flanked by ground floor two-light windows with geometric tracery and similar stone hoodmoulds. Above is a tall two-light window headed by a cusped circle in the tracery, flanked by trefoil headed lancets, with all three windows flanked by engaged columns bearing leaf capitals. Flanking the central window are statues of Our Lady and St Peter, each protected by stone gable-roofed canopies. The side aisles have trefoil headed lancets with hoodmoulds; the left (east) aisle is heightened to accommodate the organ chamber. Beyond to the east is a porch with a room above, featuring a double part-glazed door set beneath a stone Carnarvon arch with a shallow two-centred brick relieving arch framing a stone relief carving of a head surrounded by foliage.

The remaining elevations of the church are simply detailed, with plain lancets to both clerestory and aisles, stone cills but no other dressings. The chancel roof is continuous with that of the nave and has a canted end lit by three two-light windows at clerestory level.

The interior of the church has a nave of five bays, the northernmost occupied by a choir and organ gallery. The arcades feature octagonal piers with moulded capitals and pointed arches with two orders of hollow mouldings set below hoodmoulds. The windows are glazed with square and diamond quarries of clear and pink glass. The roof is canted and boarded, with arch trusses carried down the clerestory walls and supported by corbels.

The chancel is separated from the nave by a high chancel arch supported by triple columnettes rising from foliate corbels. The main chancel windows contain memorial stained glass depicting saints. The marble high altar incorporates a tabernacle and canted reredos, originally from the Roman Catholic church of St Patrick, Middlesbrough.

The side aisle windows are treated similarly to those of the clerestory; five have been reglazed with figurative stained glass as memorials. The aisle walls carry relief panels set in quatrefoils forming the Stations of the Cross. The west side aisle has inserted folding doors giving access to the attached church hall. The side chapels are vaulted and lit by further stained glass windows. The eastern chapel has a stone and marble altar and reredos incorporating a statue of Christ the Sacred Heart.

The presbytery adjoins the church and appears as a typical two-storey, two-bay late Victorian house with a large rectangular projecting double-height bay window. Its principal feature is the entrance, which has a highly ornate gothic surround imitating an embattled gabled porch, identifying it as the church's presbytery. The house has modern replacement windows and a rear extension, but retains its original chimneys and the terracotta cresting and finials to the hipped roof. The interior retains an encaustic tiled hall and much original joinery, including a closed string staircase. The fireplaces are later replacements.