RC Church of St Austin, including attached parish hall and front boundary wall, railings and gate piers

Roman Catholic Church of St Austin, including attached parish hall and front boundary wall, railings and gate piers

This Roman Catholic church was built around 1825-1828 to designs by Joseph Ireland, modified by the builder William Puckrin. It was altered in 1856 by Andrews and Delaney, with further alterations and additions in 1878-1880 by Joseph Hansom. The building is in a Neoclassical style with Baroque and Romanesque influences. An attached parish hall was added in 1930.

The church and former presbytery are built of narrow handmade mellow-red bricks with unpainted and painted-ashlar dressings. The parish hall is of red engineering brick with unpainted ashlar dressings. The roofs are slate and lead.

The church is aligned north-east to south-west, but for clarity the following description uses liturgical orientation. No longer detached, the church now effectively forms part of a terrace. It comprises a nave, north-west porch, north-east semi-octagonal Lady Chapel, and a sanctuary at the east end (converted from the original presbytery), with a sacristy off to the south side. The parish hall is attached to the east end of the church at right angles. A large garden lies to the south (rear).

The church has a four-bay nave with a chamfered plinth at basement level, a deep sill band beneath the nave windows, and a bracketed eaves cornice. A parapet hides the pitched roof from view. The north elevation has three large round-headed windows with quoined surrounds and solid tympanums containing blind tracery. The windows have multipaned sashes. Between the bays are round-headed niches. At basement level are a series of multipaned sash windows and a wide doorway with partly-glazed double doors, accessed by later brick ramps and steps from Wentworth Terrace.

At the north-west corner of the nave is a low projecting porch with a bracketed eaves cornice topped by a brick parapet. The porch has a central round-headed doorway with panelled double doors flanked by pairs of round-headed windows with columnar mullions, all with moulded arched heads. A later doorway has been inserted on the porch's west side.

Projecting from the north-east corner of the nave is a semi-octagonal Lady Chapel with ashlar banding detail. At first-floor level on the chapel's cardinal faces are leaded windows with moulded surrounds and pediments; those to the west and east are shorter. Below the north window is an inscribed plaque reading 'St Austin's/ 1828'. The chapel is topped by an eaves cornice, with a leaded-domed roof above surmounted by a cross finial. On the chapel's west side is a lower pedimented projection containing a Romanesque-style two-light window.

On the nave's south (rear) elevation, the division between the original church and the 1852 addition of the western bay is visible, with slightly darker brickwork. The south elevation has plainer windows with flat-arched heads and painted-sandstone sills, and basement windows with replaced multipaned casements and segmental-arched heads. A modern lean-to at the east end attaches to both the nave and the 1878-1880 sacristy.

The former presbytery, now containing the church's baptistery and sanctuary, is attached to the east end of the nave. It has unpainted ashlar dressings and a three-bay gabled front on the north elevation. The ground floor has an entrance to the right with a classical doorcase and two sash windows to the left with pedimented surrounds. At first-floor level are three smaller sash windows with ashlar surrounds, and a blind oculus (circular opening) sits in the gable apex. Attached to the rear (south) of the former presbytery is a two-storey cross wing added by Hansom in 1878-1880, containing the sacristy on the ground floor and a former choir loft on the first floor. The wing's west gable is surmounted by a large bell and cradle, and the roof has two chimneystacks.

The parish hall, attached to the east end of the church, is tall and single-storey (though double height internally). Its north gable-end faces Wentworth Terrace, with a projecting central porch containing partly-glazed double doors and an overlight with replaced glazing reading 'St. Austin's Theatre', all set within a moulded ashlar surround that rises to form part of a parapet. Flanking the entrance on each side are single plate-glass sash windows with ashlar surrounds. Above and behind the entrance is a large lunette window.

Internally, the north-west porch leads into the nave. The west end beneath the 1852 gallery was enclosed with a glazed screen in the 1990s in the style of a narthex, and confessionals were inserted at the south end. The gallery has fixed tiered pews and an organ installed in 2017. It is supported by two slender cast-iron Ionic columns and two plainer columns, which are believed possibly to be the original supports for the smaller 1825-1828 gallery.

The four-bay nave contains late-19th-century wooden pews and has a deep coved ceiling with a heavy cornice. The coving is believed to be part of the original 1827-1828 survival, and the eastern end of the coving marks the original east end of the church. Decorative plasterwork in the easternmost bay also denotes the original location of the sanctuary before the presbytery was converted into a new sanctuary in 1878-1880. Romanesque-style two-light false windows, with hybrid Ionic columns and glazed roundels bearing Christograms in their tympanums, exist on the inside of the nave's three western bays in front of the original Georgian sash windows. These were inserted in 1856 by Andrews and Delaney, though the eastern bay's south window was left without. There are later plaster Stations of the Cross on the nave's side walls, and also visible on the side walls are faint outlines of Gothic niches that were introduced in 1856 but later removed. Towards the eastern end of the nave is a wooden font brought from St Patrick's Church, Leeds in the early 2000s. The church's modern altars and lectern are by the Liverpool architect Richard O'Mahony and were installed following the interior's reordering in the 1990s.

The sanctuary entrance is framed by giant Corinthian columns (believed to be original) supporting a deep entablature incorporating a single-bay return into the nave at each side with paired columns in the same style, additionally flanked by piers with acanthus leaf and egg and dart detailing to the capitals. Those to the north frame the Lady Chapel entrance, while those to the south frame a window. Set below this window is a wooden medieval statue believed to be an 'Anna te Drieen' statue from the Netherlands, though it is unknown when it arrived at St Austin's or from where. The statue, which possibly dates from 1500 or earlier, depicts St Anne holding her daughter the Virgin Mary, who in turn holds the infant Jesus.

The Lady Chapel entrance incorporates three round-arched openings set between the columns and piers, with the centre opening forming an open doorway. The chapel's windows have classical surrounds incorporating segmental pediments, and on each west and east side are slight projections set behind round arches. The north walls of the chapel are adorned with a 1921/1922 wall painting of the Virgin Mary, infant Jesus and angels by Archibald Jarvis of Ipswich, which was restored by his grandson in the 1990s. A small altar below is by Richard O'Mahony. Two small round-arched windows in the west wall contain stained glass by a local artist, Steve Simpson, installed in the 1990s.

Flanking the sanctuary entrance are two doorways with moulded architraves, floating cornices above, and six-panel doors; the left leads into the baptistery, the right into the sacristy. Above the doorways are tall round-headed statue niches that were formerly leaded and stained-glass windows (the window glazing survives and can be seen in the choir loft and storage room overlooking the sanctuary) with balustrading in front. The original sanctuary rails, tabernacle and altar have all been removed, along with three arch-shaped paintings set within moulded frames on the east wall, and a new altar has been moved to a forward position. The sanctuary is lit from above by a massive nine-light skylight and has Corinthian columns in front of the rear wall set upon tall pedestals, flanking the original location of the altar. The columns support a deep entablature and giant segmental pediment above, and are flanked by blind arches on each side at ground level with moulded heads that connect with a deep cornice running around the sanctuary; the south arch would originally have contained the sedilia. The cornice incorporates a wide blind-arch on the south side with a central keystone. At first-floor level on each north and south wall are unglazed triple-arched arcades with a room behind each; the north is a tribune, the south is the organ gallery. The arcades have columns with stiff-leaf capitals and balustrading set within the arches.

The baptistery (originally a vestry) is plain and contains an octagonal artificial-stone font with a wooden lid. The sacristy contains a mixture of built-in and freestanding cupboards, and a chimneybreast survives, though the fireplace has been removed. A doorway in the south-east corner leads into a small L-shaped single-storey extension, probably added when the adjacent parish hall was built in 1930, containing a kitchenette and toilet, as well as a doorway to the rear garden.

A passageway behind the sanctuary connects the sacristy to a cast-iron spiral stair that accesses the basement and the first floor. On the first floor an identical passageway connects two rooms that overlook the sanctuary behind unglazed triple-arched openings, now covered by plastic sheeting. Stained-glass windows that formerly overlooked the nave (now blocked up and converted to statue niches on the nave side) can be seen in each room. The south room, which was possibly a choir gallery originally, is larger and has panelled walls, a painted-stone fireplace, and a bench along the south wall. A four-panel door in the west wall leads into a small room containing a water tank and a bell rope.

The basement, originally used as school rooms, has been partly modernised to create a café area, toilets and storage rooms, with the former school rooms now meeting spaces. Cast-iron columns and some wainscotting survive, along with timber floorboard floors under later coverings.

At basement level there is access through to the neighbouring double-height parish hall, which has a stage and storage/dressing areas at the south end, a cinema-style balcony at the north end, and toilets and a rear entrance off to the west side. An open-well stair at the north end with cross-shaped balustrading and a ramped timber handrail leads up to the main entrance off Wentworth Terrace, which enters the building at balcony level and has an entrance foyer with a quarry-tile floor and toilets off. Original 1930s doors survive throughout and the tiered balcony has cinema/theatre style tip-up seats.

Enclosing the north front of the church alongside Wentworth Terrace is a very low brick wall with ashlar copings surmounted by replaced late-20th-century cast-iron railings. Aligned with the former presbytery entrance, basement entrance, and the north-west porch are sets of gate piers with segmental-headed caps; those in front of the porch are larger and were originally surmounted by large gas lamps (one lamp survives in storage in the presbytery, along with the base of another lamp).