Church Of St Silas

Church of St Silas

A former parish church built in 1869, designed by John Brightmore Mitchell-Withers, located on the south side of Broomhall Street in Sheffield. The building is constructed from coursed squared stone with hipped and gabled slate roofs and an external side wall stack to the chancel. It was restored in the late 20th century and exemplifies the Gothic Revival style.

The church comprises a chancel, north chapel and vestry arranged as transepts, a nave with clerestory, aisles, a north porch, and a south-west tower. The exterior features a plinth, buttresses, and coped gables, one of which is topped with a cross. The chancel has a 4-light pointed arched window with Geometrical tracery to the east, and on each side a transomed double lancet. The hipped vestry to the south displays a double lancet to the east, below which is a chamfered double doorway, and to the south a single lancet with a door to its right. The hipped north-east chapel has two single lancets to the north and east, plus a chamfered pointed doorway to the east. The nave clerestory contains four 2-light pointed arched windows to the south and five to the north. The west end features a 5-light pointed arched window with Geometrical tracery, hoodmould and shafts, and below it a 3-light mullioned window. The south aisle has four 2-light pointed arched windows, while the five-bay north aisle contains four similar windows and a gabled porch in the fourth bay, with a single similar window to the west end.

The south-west tower has two stages. The lower stage is panelled with partly gabled angle buttresses, string courses, an enriched corbel table and a parapet with four tall crocketed pinnacles. To the south is a moulded doorway with double shafts beneath a thin gable, above which is a small single lancet followed by another small lancet with a gabled hoodmould and impost band. The west side has a double lancet with a quatrefoil above it, both under a crocketed gable. The bell stage features paired lancet bell-openings to each face.

The interior displays a chancel with a boarded wagon roof and a double chamfered arch with hoodmould and rebated square piers with ringed shaft imposts. The north side has a chamfered arch with a late 20th-century glazed screen. The north-east chapel has a pyramidal roof. The nave features four-bay arcades with round piers and stiff-leaf capitals, with plain chamfered arches. At the west end, a vestibule is defined by a Decorated style glazed wooden screen. The roof is arch braced principal rafter construction with alternate spandrels that are traceried and braced, with wall shafts on stone corbels. The aisles have arch braced lean-to roofs and segmental pointed eastern arches, the northern arch having a glazed screen and the southern arch featuring organ pipes. The north aisle contains a traceried screen at the west end and a north-west door.

Stained glass windows include a north aisle window of 1908 by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, and a chancel window of 1929 by HG Hiller & Co. Other windows date from the late 19th century and 1969.

Fittings include a Decorated style wooden reredos with canopied niches, wooden pulpit and stalls in the same style (all late 19th century), a panelled octagonal font, and a brass eagle lectern dated 1880. Memorials comprise late 19th and 20th-century brasses and a Decorated style wooden war memorial tablet dating from around 1920.