Church Of St Joseph (Roman Catholic)

1/0/10134 PACKINGTON STREET 16-OCT-03 CHURCH OF ST JOSEPH Roman Catholic Church

II

Roman Catholic Church. 1885-87, designed by Edward Simpson, altered c. 1935-37 and extended 1964 by J H Langtry-Langton. Coursed stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. Gothic Revival style. Nave and chancel under a single roof, aisles and double transepts. West front has single storey lean-to porch added 1964 with triangular headed central doorway flanked by single 3-light mullion windows. West gable has broad central lancet window with cusped lower tracery and flanking shafts topped with carved figure under canopies, which stand either side of a central crucifixion. Flanking lower and narrower lancet also have cusped tracery. The north aisle ends, to west, in a half-octagonal baptistery, which has a gable to each face over a circular window each with six tracery cusps, and below two square openings each containing a quatrefoil. South aisle ends in original porch, which would have formed the base of a tower, with pointed arched entrance doorway. Nave has 3 pairs of clerestorey windows on either side, and no aisle windows below. Each window is made up of two plain lancets and a linking quatrefoil. Double transepts also have similar 2-light windows with lower tracery and a linking upper mandala or vesica. Chancel has 3 lancet windows to north and 2 to the south. East end has large central pointed arched window with 2-lights and a linking mandala. INTERIOR has tall and broad chancel arch. Nave has two double chamfered and pointed arched arcades supported on octagonal piers to south and a similar 3 arched arcade to north. Shallow and low western arch to porch. Transepts have tall double-arched arcades. Fine quality decorative timber roofs to nave, chancel and aisles. Large painted 'stations of the cross' adorn the upper sections of the aisle walls. Original organ, wooden pews and carved stone reredos with 5 figures under a later carved wooden canopy. Floors, communion rail, and choir stalls all replaced 1937 to mark the building's Golden Jubilee. Figures of saints under canopies. The three side chapels have marble altars added 1937. This fine quality Gothic Revival style Victorian church survives well, with very interesting and high quality later alterations and additions.