Roman Catholic Church of St Edward, King and Confessor

Roman Catholic Church of St Edward, King and Confessor

The Church of St Edward, King and Confessor is a Roman Catholic church built between 1845 and 1848 by Joseph Aloysius Hansom, working from drawings by Ramsey. The west tower was added in 1866–1867 by George Goldie. The building is designed in the French-Norman Romanesque style.

Materials and Construction

The church is constructed of stone ashlar, predominantly magnesium limestone with sandstone used for the plinth. The roof is covered with green slate laid to diminishing courses.

Plan

The church comprises an eight-bay nave with side aisles, a west tower projecting from the west end, and a Lady Chapel projecting from the east end. The chancel or sanctuary, which is not expressed externally, occupies the second and third bays of the nave. The eighth bay of the nave forms a narthex to the west door with a gallery above.

An enclosed porch projects from the sixth bay of the south aisle. At the east end of the south aisle, a side chapel projects with a small, externally accessed crypt below. The sacristy forms a cross wing at the east end of the north aisle, with 1998 parish rooms extending eastwards as a cruciform addition. The second stage of the tower forms an organ chamber internally, open to the gallery at the west end of the nave.

Exterior: West Tower

The tower rises in five stages and is capped by a pyramidal stone ashlar roof with ribs, an apex finial, and a cross surmounting it. Offset clasping buttresses support the bottom four stages. The south-west buttress is enlarged to form a stair turret giving access to all levels of the tower, including the belvedere that forms the top stage. The stair turret is lit by small round-arched lancets and becomes cylindrical for the upper three stages, capped by a conical stone ashlar roof.

The bottom stage of the tower is cross-vaulted and open on three sides with large, porte-cochère-style openings formed with segmental arches. The west door into the nave is a 2018 insertion completing the original design intention.

The tower's second stage is double height with windows at the same level as those of the nave clerestory. The north and south windows are recessed within round-arched openings supported by colonnettes with scalloped capitals, set beneath a hoodmould rising from an impost stringcourse. The west window is similarly detailed but has two lights beneath a single hoodmould that also encompasses a carved shield.

The third stage rises above the level of the nave roof and has paired windows to each face, similarly styled to the north and south windows of the second stage. Below the windows is a stringcourse with a Latin inscription below on the west face.

The fourth stage has a single two-light window set within a gabled projection to each face, rising from a corbelled stringcourse.

The fifth stage is a belvedere providing a viewpoint for the surrounding countryside, including Clifford Moor. It is set back with stone ashlar roofing extending between the top of the fourth stage and the sills of the openings to the fifth stage. There are four matching openings to each face of the belvedere, arranged in pairs with central squat pillars with scalloped capitals, linked by an impost stringcourse. The belvedere has a pyramidal roof with a corbelled eaves.

Exterior: Nave and Side Aisles

The bays are defined by offset pilaster buttresses. Windows to the aisles are round-arched with simple hoodmoulds and flanked by colonnettes with scalloped capitals. Clerestory windows are trefoil-headed two-light windows, with the lights divided by single colonnettes and set beneath simple hoodmoulds. The eaves has prominent corbel blocks, possibly originally intended to be carved in situ, and stone copings to the verges. The east end has a recessed wheel window flanked by a pair of oval-shaped (vesica) windows and a finial adapted from an Iona cross above.

Exterior: Lady Chapel

The Lady Chapel lies at the east end of the nave and projects by a single bay with a hipped roof incorporating a carved corbelled cornice with chevron decoration. The corbels are individually carved as heads, geometric shapes, and other more naturalistic forms, apart from one corbel that is a plain squared block similar to most of the corbels to the nave and side aisles. The chapel's east end has a pair of round-headed lancets flanking a projecting semi-circular apse with a steeply pitched conical roof topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Exterior: South Side Chapel

The south side chapel also extends by a single bay. Its south wall has three round-headed windows set within an otherwise blind arcade that continues around the east end, where it is punctuated by a round-headed window extending up into a steeply pitched gabled dormer. The eaves on the south side is supported by a set of individually carved corbels.

Exterior: South Porch

The porch has offset buttresses supporting a coped gable with an ornamented cross finial. The entrance is set within a three-order round arch supported by colonnettes with leaf capitals, shafts of red sandstone, and a hoodmould with carved label stops in the form of leaves. Above the entrance is a round-arched niche containing a weathered statue of St Edward the Confessor flanked by colonnettes. The porch's side walls each have a small window with colonnettes.

Exterior: Sacristy

The sacristy is simply detailed and gabled with a cross finial.

Interior: General

The interior has pale stone ashlar walling and stone flooring with exposed dark-stained timber roof structures. Windows to the aisles, the east end, and the chapels have stained glass; those to the nave clerestory have clear glazing.

Interior: Nave

The westernmost bay of the nave is divided off from the main body of the church by a screen of three arches to form a narthex for the west door; the arches are infilled with modern plate-glass screening. Above is a choir gallery with an archway through to an organ chamber housed in the second stage of the tower.

In the main body of the nave, the arcading between the nave and aisles is formed by massive cylindrical piers with octagonal capitals supporting roll-moulded and chamfered round arches with hollow-chamfered hoodmoulds springing from shield bosses. The third piers from the east end, framing the chancel step, are all richly carved with 'turtle' bases. The shaft of the south pier is a bold helix with a capital carved with foliage framing a series of scenes and emblems. The north pier is fish-scaled, including a band of painted and gold-leafed heraldic shields with a palmette capital.

The second bay of the nave forms the sanctuary and is screened from the east end and the side aisles by arcading set on a plinth incorporating bench seating and individually carved capitals; the screening extends up to the bottom of the capitals of the nave arcades. The sanctuary is overlooked by three painted and gilded shield-bearing angels to each side, individually carved from the shield bosses forming the springing points of the hoodmoulds above the nave arcades. The other shield bosses, to the western end of the nave, are uncarved plain blocks now supporting lighting.

The east end has a triptych of arches giving a view through to the Lady Chapel. Set above is a large timber crucifix flanked by statues of the Virgin Mary and St John the Apostle, each figure set upon its own fluted drum corbel. The east wheel and vesica windows above have raised ornamented frames; those to the two vesica windows incorporate stepped hoodmoulds that imitate triptychs.

Interior: Lady Chapel

The Lady Chapel has a very ornately carved archway through to the semi-domed apse, which holds a stone altar supported by a pair of kneeling angels carved in full relief. Set on this altar is a Carrara marble statue of the Virgin Mary by Karl Hoffmann. The capitals to the piers between the nave and the chapel are individually carved on the faces seen from the nave, but are uncarved on the Lady Chapel side.

Interior: South Side Chapel

The south side chapel is stone vaulted and is separated from the south aisle by a low wall and gates. It incorporates an ornamented stone altar supporting a stone reredos incorporating a tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament.

Interior: Crypt

The crypt is a small barrel-vaulted chamber below the side chapel, lit via a small window in the east wall and containing two sarcophagi, with individual burial vaults in the west wall.

Fittings

The main altar is in the form of an arcaded enclosure for the stone sarcophagus of St Domitia the Second. Each pier of the arcade has individually carved bases, shafts, and capitals, with the round arches carved with chevron decoration, the carving embellished with gold leaf.

The pulpit and font are ornately carved but with blind arcading; the arches are Romanesque for the pulpit and in the form of trefoil lancets for the font.

Stained Glass

The church has 26 stained glass windows of varying dates (1848–1986), styles, and qualities, mostly Victorian. For most of the windows the designers are unknown, but two from 1848 are by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (both in the north aisle: bays two and four from the east), and five are by A. Lusson or Lusson and Bourdon of France, dated to the 1850s (north aisle bay one and the windows to the side chapel). Later windows include Our Lady of Lourdes (1970 by John Hardman Studios, bay seven north aisle) and the Blessed Ralph Grimston, martyred 1598, incorporating a depiction of St Edward's Church (1986 by J. A. Dean, south aisle bay three).