Church Of St Thomas

SE 1316 HUDDERSFIELD MANCHESTER ROAD (North side) 919/33/26 Church of St Thomas 03.05.52 II*

Church. 1857-59. Architect Sir G G Scott. Contractors: Messrs Ben Graham of Huddersfield. Clerk of Works: Alfred A Walton. Coursed-dressed stone with ashlar dressings. Pitched slate roofs, separate roofs to nave and aisles. Coped gables with finials. Nave, chancel, aisles, north chancel chapel and one storey vestry, organ recess and sacristy on south side, porch. The outstanding feature is the south-west tower: 4 stages, surmounted by tall broach spire with gabled lucarnes. Plate tracery, early C13 to tower, late C13 to aisles. Grouped lancets in east end (blind to sacristy), and oculi with bar tracery in gable ends. Octagonal stair towers with conical ashlar roofs. Buttresses. Parapets to south aisle and tower. Gargoyles. INTERIOR: Cylindrical piers with moulded capitals: hoodmoulds with carved label stops. Chancel has 2-bay arcade either side, with 2-centred arches and pierced quatrefoils in spandrels: naturalistic foliage carving to capitals, as to chancel arch. Pointed timber barrel vaults (diagonal bracing in chancel): wagon roofs to aisles. Low arcaded reredos, piscina, sedilia and pulpit, all of similar design, ashlar, delicate foliage carving, marble colonnettes. Communion rail with stylised iron foliage balusters, moulded wooden rail and newels. Rood beam with figures of Christ crucified, St Mary and St John. Characteristic simple bench ends and brass lectern. Good monument in style of pulpit, with delicate foliage ornament to Thomas Starkey (d 1847) and his brothers Joseph and John. Stained glass by Clayton and Bell, that in north aisle by temps. History: Thomas Starkey, one of the family who owned Springdale Mill, Manchester Road, intended to found a church, but died of typhus. His widow asked the Vicar of Huddersfield, Canon Bateman, to approach Scott, whose father had been Bateman's tutor and who had been a boyhood friend of his. The foundation stone was laid on 19 March 1857 by Thomas Starkey's widow, Charlotte. (Below the stone is a jar with each of the current coins of the realm, and copies of the Times, the Leeds Mercury, the Huddersfield Chronicle and the Manchester Guardian). It was consecrated on 30 June 1859 by the Bishop of Ripon. The building cost ?9,000, mainly provided by the Starkey family. The first Vicar was Mrs Starkey's 27 year old nephew Edmund Snowden (Vicar 1859-92).

Listing NGR: SE1382916225