Church Of St Stephen

Church of St Stephen

Parish church built in 1857 by the architectural firm Flockton & Sons, paid for by Henry Wilson of Westbrook. The building was restored in 1984 and has received mid and late 20th-century additions and alterations.

The church is constructed in coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings and steep pitched slate roofs, designed in the Gothic Revival style. It follows a cruciform plan with a crossing tower, north-east vestry, and north and west porches.

The exterior displays characteristic Gothic features including a plinth, buttresses, sillband, chamfered eaves, and coped gables. The windows are predominantly 2-light pointed arch windows with tracery and hoodmoulds featuring mask stops. The chancel's east end contains a 5-light pointed arch window, beneath which is a late 20th-century door with brick cheeks flanked by single windows. The north side has 2 windows, whilst the south-east side features a lean-to projection with a stack and an untraceried triple lancet with chamfered surround. The adjoining south-east vestry has a coped gable with a large stone gable stack with pierced cap, a chamfered doorway flanked to the left by a cusped 2-light pointed arch window and to the right by a blank opening.

The square crossing tower rises in two stages with clasping buttresses to the lower stage, quoins, string course, corbel table, and crenellated parapet. The bell stage features on each side a pair of 2-light pointed arch bell openings with hoodmoulds. The south transept has a wheel window in its south gable and a single-storey 20th-century addition below. Each side contains 2 twentieth-century windows, and the west side has a canted stair turret with segmental pointed door and a single 19th-century window. The north transept displays a 3-light pointed arch window in the gable and a 2-light similar window to the east, with a truncated 2-light pointed arch window to the west, below which is a flat-roofed 20th-century porch with coped side wall and recessed glazed door.

The aisleless nave has 3 windows to the south, the central one with a large 20th-century window inserted below it, and a triangular projection to the west with a single cusped lancet to the east. The north side contains 4 windows, the eastern one partly covered by the north porch, with a door inserted below the next window to the west. The west end features a 4-light pointed arch window and below it a single lancet on each side flanking the west porch. The cross-gabled west porch has a moulded pointed doorway with shafts to the north and a 2-light pointed arch window to the west.

Interior

The chancel features an arch-braced principal rafter roof with collars and wall shafts, the arch having square piers with capitals removed. The south side contains a double chamfered doorway and double chamfered arch. The east end has a patterned stained glass window with sillband and 20th-century door and windows below. The crossing has a 20th-century cross beam concrete ceiling, glazed wooden screen, and stair. A first-floor Sunday school has moulded arches with glazed screens and a cross beam ceiling with arched corner braces. The north transept has a similar inserted floor forming a first-floor room, whilst the south transept is screened off.

The nave has an arch-braced principal rafter roof with collars and altered wall shafts and corbels. The east end contains a blocked arch with octagonal piers and capitals. The west end displays a traceried panelled gallery on round cast-iron posts, with a pointed doorway below. Each side has plain windows and the south side has a gabled-headed door. The west porch features a fillet moulded chamfered doorway.

Fittings include a 19th-century stone font and matchboard benches. Memorials comprise 2 gabled mosaic war memorial tablets dating to around 1920 and a Classical marble war memorial tablet with brass dated 1898.