Roman Catholic Church Of St Mary Crowned

The Roman Catholic Church of St Mary Crowned was built between 1882 and 1887. It is constructed of coursed millstone grit with ashlar dressings and has Welsh slate roofs with coped gables and cross finials. The church is designed in the Gothic Revival style.

The plan incorporates a nave with aisles, a bell tower, a west baptistry, a south-west porch, and an apsidal east end. A double chamfered plinth, sill bands, a moulded cornice, and angle buttresses with set-offs, gabled tops, and four corner pinnacles are prominent external features.

The west front features a projecting apsidal baptistry with trefoil windows on each face and a pierced parapet above. Above the baptistry is a large six-light pointed arch window with geometrical tracery. The north aisle has a pointed arch doorway, and the south aisle has a two-light pointed arch window. The north and south aisles each have eight two-light pointed arch windows; one on the south side is replaced with a projecting gabled porch, and another with a projecting confessional. Above these are eight pairs of lancet windows to the clerestory. The roof has gabled dormer vents.

A prominent polygonal bell tower, positioned in the south-east corner of the nave, is supported by massive buttresses with large set-offs. The apsidal east end features five two-light pointed arch windows with geometrical tracery, topped by a pierced parapet.

The interior features a nave of eight bays with circular piers and responds, having moulded square section capitals with chamfered corners, a continuous hood mould with shields in the spandrel, and deeply recessed paired clerestory windows. The roof is scissor braced, with arched braces, and the aisles have stone transverse strainer arches. Panelled doors lead to the confessional and presbytery, all under hoodmoulds. The chancel has stone parcloses of five open bays with trefoil headed arches surmounted by angels. The sanctuary is marked by a sentry arch on corbelled double shafts. A three-bay stone reredos is present, along with painted arches and a decorated ceiling in the canted apse.

Included fittings comprise a low chancel screen wall, a decorated iron screen to the western baptistry projecting into the nave, an octagonal stone font, an altar with a relief depicting the Last Supper, stained glass in the apse depicting scenes from the life of Mary, a triple arched sedilia under an elaborate traceried canopy, a complete set of contemporary open benches in the nave, and screens to the internal porch.