Church Of St George And Attached Rectory, Gates And Railings St Georges Church Rectory

Church of St George and Attached Rectory, Gates and Railings

Roman Catholic church, rectory, gates and railings. The church was built in 1849-50, and the rectory in 1856. The church was altered and restored in 1901 and 1923, with further restoration and re-ordering in 1989-90. The buildings were designed by Joseph and Charles Hansom.

The church is constructed of magnesian limestone ashlar, cement-rendered in places, with a Welsh slate roof in three parallel ranges and a brick stack to the sacristy. The rectory is built of white brick in English garden-wall bond with ashlar dressings, brick stacks, and stone coping to the slate roof.

The church plan comprises a chancel with a west bellcote, a south chapel, a north sacristy, and a five-bay aisled nave with a south porch. The church is encircled by two-stage buttresses with offsets.

The east end features a twin-gabled front with a one-storey two-bay sacristy on a high basement to the north. A four-centred east window contains four trefoiled lights with traceried heads and hoodmoulds on foliate stops. The chapel window is two-centred with three trefoiled lights, similarly detailed. The sacristy has a blocked doorway between two- and three-light mullion windows in chamfered openings with shouldered heads, an inserted flat-topped dormer with four pivoting windows, and a ridge stack. The gabled and buttressed bellcote on a chamfered plinth has paired trefoiled openings and a quatrefoil in the apex.

The north side is largely obscured by the rectory and sacristy. The sacristy has a single shouldered light in its north gable and a chamfered shouldered doorway in the west return.

On the south side, a buttressed and gabled porch contains boarded double doors in a pointed opening of two continuously moulded orders beneath a hoodmould on foliate stops. The porch returns have square-headed windows of paired lights with cusped ogee heads. The nave windows are of two trefoiled lights, with the chapel window to the east containing three lights; all have traceried two-centred heads and head-stopped hoodmoulds. A buttress to the west of the chapel has a gabled niche housing a carved figure of St George in the round.

The west end is triple-gabled. The west doorway has boarded double doors in a two-centred arch of two orders with filleted columns and foliate capitals, beneath a head-stopped hoodmould. The west window contains three trefoiled lights, and the aisle windows two trefoiled lights, all with hoodmoulds on head stops. The nave gable end has a sexfoiled light beneath a hoodmould, whilst the aisles have trefoil lights in triangular surrounds. All window tracery is Geometrical in style, with chamfered and quoined openings. The chancel, bellcote, porch, and nave and aisle west ends have gable crosses.

At the west end, square-section gate piers with pyramidal caps, approximately 2.25 metres high, flank gates approximately 1.75 metres high. The gates incorporate bands of concentric circles, scrolls, and pierced rails. Railings of the same design, approximately 0.75 metres high, sit on a low stone wall. The gate and railings on the south side have spear tips, and the gates hang from posts with tapered octagonal finials.

The rectory, on George Street, has two storeys on a chamfered basement plinth, with two gabled bays, the left bay containing an attic. The entrance is in the left return, opening onto Peel Street. Ground and first-floor windows are of three mullioned and transomed lights, those on the ground floor having two-centred heads; the attic window contains two mullioned lights with casements. A moulded first-floor band is continued on the Peel Street front, and the gable has moulded coping.

The Peel Street front has a basement and three storeys across two bays with irregular fenestration, and a lower three-storey wing to the left. A square-headed doorcase in the wing contains a sunk-panel door in a four-centred arch with spandrels carved with shields of the cross of St George set in foliage. To the left are paired one-pane sashes with a stone sill and flat brick arch. The main front has a full-height stack in the right bay and two-light windows in the left bay: paired one-pane sashes on the ground floor, mullioned and transomed on the first floor, and a single casement beneath the eaves. All window surrounds are square-headed, quoined, and chamfered, with chamfered mullions.

Internally, the church has a four-centred double chamfered chancel arch with a head-stopped hoodmould, resting on clustered columns with moulded capitals and bases. The north and south arcades contain two-centred double chamfered arches on octagonal piers with moulded capitals and bases. The Lady Chapel screen comprises three gabled bays of paired trefoiled lights with traceried heads, between foliate colonnettes, with a centre opening flanked by winged angel corbels. The gables are crocketed, with the centre one surmounted by a pedestal housing a canopied image of the Virgin and Child, and the outer ones by crocketed finials.

An octagonal font stands on a square pedestal with panels carved in high relief and a cover of clustered volutes. Reconstructed altars incorporate communion rail marble in the Sanctuary and pulpit marble in the Lady Chapel, the marble having been given by Irish dealers from the cattle market formerly held in the Fishergate area.

The east window is by Hardman, possibly designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, whilst the Lady Chapel window is by Barnett and Sons. The nave and aisle roofs are scissor-braced, and the chancel ceiling is coffered and painted.

Cast-iron gates and railings form subsidiary features.

Historically, the medieval church of St George at Beanhills, suppressed in 1547, formerly stood in the surviving graveyard on the west side of George Street. The present church served as a temporary Pro-Cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Beverley until being replaced in 1864 by the church of St Wilfrid in Lop Lane, now Duncombe Place.