Parish Church Of St Mary

Parish Church of St Mary

This church was built between 1792 and 1797 by Thomas Gardner for Richard Arkwright's industrial complex at Cromford. It was substantially remodelled in 1858 by H.I. Stevens, and decorated with an extensive scheme of interior paintings and stained glass by A.O. Hemming in the 1890s.

The church is constructed of freestone and tooled gritstone, with a corrugated stainless-steel roof. It comprises a wide nave with a lower and narrower chancel, a west tower flanked by gallery stair turrets, and a west narthex.

The exterior displays a lavish free Perpendicular style with embattled parapets on moulded cornices. The buttressed five-bay nave contains two-light windows with transoms and hood moulds. On the south side is a tall stack above a boiler room. The unbuttressed west tower is three storeys high with an embattled parapet and corner pinnacles. It features a trefoil-headed west window in the second stage, above which is a clock dated 1859 in a lozenge panel, and two-light belfry openings with louvres. The tower is flanked by lower bays housing the gallery stairs, which have plain parapets and straight-headed three-light gallery windows with ogee-headed lights, and single-light side windows. The three-bay open-fronted and open-sided narthex has diagonal buttresses with arches under linked hoods and continuous ovolo mouldings. The chancel has two-light windows in its polygonal sanctuary apse.

The interior features a shallow-pitched nave roof with king and queen posts supported by corbelled arched brackets enriched with tracery in the spandrels. The wide two-centred chancel arch has an inner order on short corbelled shafts. The chancel roof has radiating ribs into the apse. In the west wall of the nave are three segmental-pointed arches serving the centrally placed organ and the galleries. The raked west gallery, an integral component of the interior design, has a Gothic arcaded front. The nave is paved in stone and the chancel has a mosaic floor, probably of 1897. Raised floorboards are beneath the pews.

The most striking feature is the complete scheme of wall paintings executed by A.O. Hemming (1843–1907). The decoration consists of a cream ground with foliage bands and vine scrolls in the window reveals, and stencilled patterning outlining the windows and arches. On the north side of the nave are Old Testament prophets and on the south side are the Evangelists. Either side of the chancel arch are Elijah with the chariot of fire to the left and the Ascension to the right, with angels in the spandrels. Scenes from the childhood of Christ are depicted on the north and south chancel walls, with two images of Christ in the east wall. The reredos consists of shouldered panels painted with angels holding shields bearing Passion symbols, and a central panel of two angels holding a circle of cherubim. The chancel windows continue the theme of the life of Christ. A window in the north aisle is early twentieth-century in the style of Kempe.

The font, dating from the 1850s, has an octagonal bowl on a stem with marble shafts. The polygonal wooden pulpit has Gothic and linenfold panels. The benches have ends with arm rests and small quatrefoil panels. The richer choir stalls have blind-tracery panels to the frontals and ends, which also bear angel finials. The principal memorial is a five-bay blind arcade in the chancel wall, of which two arches are under gables, with inscription panels commemorating Richard Arkwright (1732–92) and his descendants. The nave contains white-marble tablets to Martha Arkwright (died 1820) by Francis Chantrey and to Charles Arkwright (died 1850) by H. Weekes.

The church was designed by Thomas Gardner (c.1737–1804), an architect and builder of Uttoxeter who was also employed on the reconstruction of Arkwright's Willersley Castle. The wide proportions of the nave are characteristic of the period. Gardner's original church probably had a small chancel of a type that had become deeply unfashionable by the 1850s. In 1858, H.I. Stevens (1806–73), an architect of Derby who built many churches in the East Midlands, substantially rebuilt the church, enlarging the chancel, remodelling windows, and adding the tower and west narthex. Alfred Octavius Hemming, who had previously worked for Clayton & Bell and completed a similar extensive mural scheme at Folkestone, Kent, undertook the ambitious scheme of wall paintings and stained glass. The scheme at Cromford was completed in 1897 on the centenary of the church. The paintings were restored in 2002 by the Wallpaintings Workshop of Faversham. The church was re-roofed in 1996.