Church Of St Stephen

Church of St Stephen, Lindley

A parish church built in 1829 by architect John Oates of Halifax, with a late 19th-century chancel extension and late 20th-century interior re-ordering (1996–2000 by Peter Langtry-Langton). The building is constructed of coursed local sandstone with slate roofs.

The church comprises a nave, south porch, west tower, and a lower, narrower chancel with north and south vestries and north organ chamber.

The exterior displays the simple Gothic style favoured in the early 19th century. The five-bay nave is exceptionally wide, designed to accommodate a three-sided gallery, and is buttressed with a plain parapet. It features pointed windows, and in the first bay a shallow porch with pinnacles on buttresses and a pointed doorway with ribbed doors. The tall window in the second bay has been divided into two short windows due to an inserted floor inside. The four-stage west tower has angle buttresses and an embattled parapet with corner pinnacles. A south doorway in a projecting gabled surround gives entrance to the gallery stairs. The tower has a pointed west window, similar but smaller windows at the second stage, oculi in the short third stage, and pointed, broad-chamfered belfry openings with louvres. On the north side of the tower is an L-plan extension with lancet windows. The chancel displays late 19th-century detailing, including a five-light Decorated east window and trefoil-headed north and south windows. The vestry and organ chamber sit under lean-to roofs; the vestry has a two-light window and steps up to a doorway with chamfered surround.

The interior retains double-hammerbeam roofs on corbels in both the nave and chancel, enriched with cusped braces and central pendants. The moulded chancel arch stands on attached shafts. The first two bays of the nave have been partitioned to create two-storey meeting rooms, an office, and choir vestry. The tower retains its original cantilever stone stair with iron balusters. A two-bay arcade on the north side of the chancel opens to the organ chamber. Walls are plastered.

The west gallery is carried on slender piers of clustered shafts. The gallery front, re-arranged when the north and south sections were removed, features blind arches spanning the nave width. The font is a tapering round bowl on a marble stem. The polygonal wooden pulpit has elaborate blind tracery and stands on a freestone base also decorated with blind tracery. Surviving nave benches have shaped ends and panelled frontals. The chancel features a Gothic-panelled dado and choir stalls with poppy heads and open arcaded frontals. Several late 19th and early 20th-century stained-glass windows survive, including examples by Ward & Hughes (c1887 and 1902), C.E. Steel of Tudor Studios, Leeds, and Kayll & Reed of Leeds (1918). There are also 19th-century wall tablets.

The church was built at a cost of £2,714, wholly funded under the 1818 Church Building Act, which was enacted to provide Anglican churches in growing industrial districts where worship provision was lacking. John Oates (1793–1831) was a busy architect during the 1820s, building several Gothic churches; his best-known secular works include Huddersfield Infirmary and Halifax Assembly and Concert Rooms. The chancel was remodelled and refurnished in the late 19th century, and parts of the original gallery may have been removed at this time.