Church Of St Philip The Apostle

Church of St Philip the Apostle, Birchencliffe

A parish church of 1878 designed by J.N. Cross, an architect based in Liverpool who was active from 1868 to 1883. The building is constructed from coursed sandstone with freestone dressings and has graded-slate roofs with ridge tiles.

The church is planned with a nave, north aisle, north-west porch, lower chancel, and south organ chamber. It is designed in the Decorated Gothic style with steep roofs incorporating gabled ventilators to the nave. Most notably, it features an asymmetrical and uncompleted tower, the lower two stages of which form the porch. The tower was intended to have a north location and possibly a spire, but construction was never finished. It is now capped with a saddleback roof and louvres in the gable.

The buttressed 4-bay nave displays 2-light south windows, triple trefoil-headed windows in the north clerestorey, and a west front with diagonal buttresses. The west front contains two single-light windows with pointed trefoil tracery lights below a circle with three tracery quatrefoils. The north aisle has paired trefoil-headed windows. The porch is storeyed and uses the lower stages of the uncompleted tower, with diagonal buttresses, a pointed north doorway with continuous moulding, west lancet, and west stair-turret doorway. The upper storey contains small quatrefoil windows in bold surrounds. The chancel has a 3-light east window with diagonal buttresses and two single-light traceried north windows. The organ chamber sits under a lean-to roof with pointed windows and a doorway with continuous chamfer.

Inside, the nave features an arched-brace roof with two tiers of windbraces and scissor braces. The common rafters are decorated with stencilled rosettes and chevrons. The 3-bay nave arcade rests on round piers and has finely moulded arches. Blind arches appear on the south and east faces of the tower base. The chancel arch has continuous moulding and an inner order on slender shafts. The chancel roof has cusped arched braces on corbels with a single tier of windbraces and painted polygonal rafters. Walls are plastered and there are floorboards beneath the pews.

The furnishings are largely integral with the church's construction. The font is Perpendicular in style, octagonal with cusped panels and a wooden cover. The benches have unusually thin X-shaped ends. The polygonal freestone pulpit features blind cusped arches inlaid with tiles representing the four seasons, with painted inscriptions on tile panels. The 5-bay chancel screen has main lights with intricate tracery, a cornice, and brattishing. The choir stalls have finials and open-arcaded frontals. The sanctuary features a Gothic panelled dado dated 1923 that is integral with the reredos, which has blind-tracery panels with low-relief carvings of lilies beneath a canopy.