Church Of St Peter

The Church of St Peter was built between 1891 and 1894 by John Codd for Charles Edward Stephen Cooke. Constructed of deeply-coursed dressed sandstone with red tile roofs, the church is in the Gothic Revival style with geometric tracery. It comprises a five-bay nave with shallow aisles and a south porch that rises as a three-stage tower with a spire; a north porch, now walled up with a statue in its gable niche; a narrower, lower, two-bay chancel with a north organ chamber and vestry.

The building features a chamfered plinth and keel-moulded string courses below the windows, which extend over as continuous hoodmoulds. The western bays of the nave have porches, and the other bays have pointed-arched, three-light windows. The west end has two-light windows between four buttresses, and a quatrefoiled, circular window in the gable. Gable copings are topped with crosses at both the east and west ends. The tower has full-height angle buttresses, a south door with a returning hoodmould, and a string course below a small, two-light window. Clock faces are set within recessed panels on the second stage. The third stage has paired belfry openings with transoms, louvres, and hoodmoulds beneath foiled openings, all linked by a hoodmould. A corbel table sits above, supporting a broach spire with tall lucarnes. A 20th-century south addition fronts the chancel’s two-light windows. The north organ chamber has two small, two-light windows between a string course and a foiled gable opening. A lean-to vestry extends to the east, with a door that angles with the organ chamber, and buttresses flank a five-light east window.

Inside the nave, the shallow aisles have piers of treble-shafted, cylindrical, and octagonal form, with double-chamfered, pointed arches and continuous hoodmoulds. Lancet arches define the aisle openings. The roof features moulded tie beams, arch-braced trusses, coving, and cusped arcading along each side. The chancel contains carved oak choir stalls, a pulpit with an alabaster top rail, and an alabaster reredos with three crocketed, gabled panels. A plaque on the north wall commemorates Charles Edward Stephen Cooke’s erection of the church in memory of his parents on the feast of St Peter in 1891. The church was illustrated in Building News in September 1897.