Church Of St Saviour

Church of St Saviour, built 1875–77, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. A substantial red brick church with stone dressings and a slate roof laid in diminishing courses with pierced ridge tiles, combining Early English and Transitional styles with some Norman detailing.

The church is planned with a clerestoried nave, north and south aisles, north and south transepts, an apsidal chancel with a southeast chapel and northeast organ chamber and vestry, and a southwest tower and porch.

The exterior displays moulded brick eaves corbel tables and set-back buttresses throughout. The apsidal chancel, buttressed in two tiers, has a lower tier of lancet windows and an upper tier of quatrefoil windows divided by brick pilasters. The west end of the nave is striking, featuring a shallow gabled porch with a richly moulded doorway with brick shafts and stone capitals, flanked by sexafoil windows in roundels with toothed moulding and moulded brick hoodmoulds. Above the porch is a frieze of six lancet windows beneath an intersecting arcade of decorated moulded brickwork, surmounted by a rose window in a gable with stepped decoration to the verges. Triple lancet clerestory windows light the nave, while the aisles have buttressed bays with lancet windows. The transepts are buttressed with lancet windows and wheel windows in gables with stepped brick decoration. The imposing four-stage southwest tower and porch has set-back buttresses with stone set-offs, a stone broach spire with two tiers of lucarnes, a roll-moulded two-centred south doorway with brick shafts and stiff-leaf capitals, a two-leaf door with ornamental strap hinges, lancet windows with dogtooth moulding and brick shafts with stone capitals, and large paired lancet belfry windows. A brick corbel table runs below the tower.

The interior is built in brick and stone. Moulded brick arches with toothed decoration span the crossing on short stone shafts painted white, while a moulded stone arch with waterleaf capitals encloses the sanctuary. The nave and transepts are roofed with two-tier tie beam roofs with king posts and arch braces below the collar and a king post above with wind-braces; the nave has intermediate scissor-braced trusses. The crossing features a quadripartite rib vault with moulded stone ribs and a central carved boss, whilst the choir has a timber rib vault and the apse a plain brick dome. Four-bay north and south aisles contain circular brick piers with waterleaf capitals supporting brick arches; the crossing piers are thicker and of polished granite. The sanctuary has encaustic floor tiles, circa early 20th-century panelled dado with integral panelled reredos featuring a carved frieze and cresting, choir stalls with shouldered ends and roundel finials with open traceried fronts and toothed transoms, a stone drum pulpit with open arcading (stonework painted white) on a circular brick stem (painted red), and a font with a square stone bowl with chamfered lower corners on an octagonal stem with a waterleaf capital, all painted white. Nave benches have shouldered ends. A First World War southeast memorial chapel is screened off with round-headed arches, a panelled dado, and a matching altar. Good east and west stained glass windows of circa 1880 are present, along with other windows including one signed by T E Curtis of Ward and Hughes, dated 1914.

The small churchyard at the west end is defined by iron railings and gates hung from brick piers with stone caps, with a west gateway featuring an iron overthrow with a lamp-holder.