Church Of St Osmund

Church of St Osmund

Parish church of 1904 designed by P.H. Currey, the architect brother of the church's first incumbent. Currey (1864-1942) had worked with Sir A.W. Blomfield before establishing his practice in Derby in 1888.

The church is built of brick with freestone dressings and a graded slate roof. It follows a simple free Gothic style and comprises an aisled nave with north-west and south-west porches, a chancel with a north organ chamber and vestry, and a south chapel.

The tall nave has a steep roof with eyebrow ventilators and a shingled fleche between nave and chancel, featuring open trefoil arcading to a single bell. The nave is four bays with tall two-light Decorated clerestorey windows and small lancet aisle windows. The north-west porch has a north-east buttress containing a figure of St Osmund in a niche, with the entrance framed by ringed granite shafts leading to recessed doors beneath a tympanum bearing an inscription. The plainer south-west porch has a stepped segmental-pointed arch to west doors. The west front comprises high triple lancets with two cusped narrow windows below. The chancel has one north lancet, two south lancets, and a Decorated three-light east window under chequerwork brick and stone in the gable. The three-bay south chapel has gabled buttresses, a two-light east window, and on the south side, lancets under segmental arches spanning the buttresses. The north organ chamber has two tall high lancets recessed under a segmental arch, with an L-shaped vestry below.

The lofty nave and chancel form a single internal space beneath a seven-bay crown-post roof, with a double truss on corbelled wall shafts marking the junction and supporting the fleche. The nave arcades have round piers of glazed white brick with stepped arches. The aisles have arched-brace roofs and the chapel has quadripartite vaults with freestone ribs. Three arches on the south side of the chancel lead into the chapel, and a high arch on semi-circular responds connects to the organ chamber. The walls are brick. The floor comprises tiles with floorboards beneath the pews and a black-and-white diaper marble floor in the sanctuary.

The church contains several high-quality Anglo-Catholic fixtures. The severely detailed octagonal font bowl sits on an arcaded stem. Stations of the Cross are displayed as plaster-cast panels in the aisle walls. The polygonal wooden pulpit incorporates carvings of the Evangelists, said to be the work of the first incumbent. The banded Chellaston marble reredos features a central arch with a wooden figure of Christ against a mosaic background. The benches have inverted Y-shaped ends, though many have been removed. Choir stalls have carved finials to their ends. A low cast and wrought-iron chancel screen stands on a dwarf wall, above which is a rood beam with traditional rood.