Parish Church Of St Bartholomew

Parish Church of St Bartholomew, Whittington

This parish church was built in 1896 by the architect E.R. Rollinson on the site of an earlier church. It is constructed of coursed rock-faced gritstone with freestone dressings and slate roof.

The church is designed in the Decorated Gothic style. The plan comprises a nave with aisles, a south-west tower and spire, a lower chancel with a south organ chamber and north-east vestry.

The exterior displays characteristic Gothic features throughout. Windows have hood moulds with head stops and cusped heads. The three-stage tower has set-back buttresses and a broach spire, with a south doorway set within a projecting gable and featuring a single order of nook shafts. The west wall contains a pair of single windows; the second stage has short windows, and the upper stage has larger triple belfry openings with louvres. The five-bay nave has paired clerestorey windows. The aisles are lit by 2-light windows except for the easternmost bay, which has 3-light segmental-pointed windows. The west front has a doorway with continuous chamfer, flanked by small windows, with a 4-light window above. The chancel has 3-light east and 1-light north and south windows. The organ chamber, gabled to imitate a transept, has a 2-light south window and 2 east windows. The lean-to vestry has a tall eaves stack.

Internally, the five-bay north arcade and four-bay south arcade (reduced by the tower position) have round piers and double-chamfered arches with linked hoods featuring foliage stops. The first two bays have been partitioned off below the level of the west window. The chancel arch is double-chamfered on short polygonal responds resting on angel corbels. The nave features an open polygonal roof; the chancel has an open keeled wagon roof on a deep cornice of quatrefoils and cusping. The walls are plastered. Original floor tiles remain beneath carpets, with raised parquet floors under the pews. The sanctuary is laid with glazed and encaustic tiles.

Principal fixtures surviving from 1896 include a round font with inscription around the bowl on a round stem, a polygonal pulpit with open arcading, and pews with shaped ends and frontals featuring blind Gothic arcading. Choir stalls, re-set facing west at the east end of the chancel, have traceried ends with poppy heads. A complete scheme of stained-glass windows survives in the aisles, depicting a sequence of important figures in church history from St Alban to William Gladstone; these are of variable quality. One window is signed by E. Frampton of London, while a north aisle window is by Morris & Co (1915). The east window shows the crucifixion, and the 1914-18 war-memorial west window is by Jones & Willis.

The interior was reordered in the 1970s when some pews were removed to create a vestibule and service rooms at the west end of the nave.