The Parish Church Of St Lawrence

The Parish Church of St Lawrence

Parish church on Hackney Lane, Barlow. Constructed in the early 13th century with additions and alterations dating to the 14th and 15th centuries. The chancel was rebuilt in a neo-Romanesque style in 1867 by architect S Rollinson. The church contains 20th-century furnishings. The building is constructed from ashlar and coursed rubble coal measures sandstone with stone quoins, coped gables topped with ball and cross finials, and stone slate roofing.

The church comprises a six-bay nave with a bell-cote, a south porch, a south aisle chapel, and a chancel with a vestry on the north wall. The first bay of the nave has blocked clerestorey lights—one with a square head and one a former 17th-century two-light window with segmental arched heads. The bell-cote has a masonry west wall with a plain chamfered opening and a louvred shutter; it was later enlarged to form a bell tower now finished with weather-boarded cheeks and a leaded ogee roof topped with a wooden finial and weathervane.

The gabled south porch features coping and a stepped, chamfered arch rising from moulded imposts. Within are stone benches with wooden plank seats. The porch encloses a 13th-century quoined doorway with a semi-circular arched head springing from plainly-moulded imposts, and above it a chamfered hood mould with a stone head. The doorway contains a planked and studded door set in a panelled oak surround with a semi-circular head. A stone staircase rises to the east of the porch.

The transeptal south chapel sits beneath a monopitch extension to the nave roof and contains a five-light Perpendicular window with plainly moulded mullions, shallow ogee heads, and diamond leaded lights. A two-light Decorated pointed east window has lights with trefoil heads supporting an apex quatrefoil. A remaining nave bay features a single pointed early Decorated window with 'Y' tracery. The nave retains a blocked 13th-century priests' door with massive irregular quoins and rounded ends to a deep lintel, and a shallow clasping buttress to its southeast corner.

The neo-Romanesque chancel rises from a plain stepped and chamfered plinth with shallow buttresses and two plain 19th-century semi-circular headed windows with quoined and chamfered surrounds. The east end has clasping buttresses and a tripartite window with semi-circular arched heads, topped by a wheel window at the gable apex with moulded spokes. The vestry to the north displays a 19th-century two-light window with semi-circular heads to the lights and a moulded column with cushion capital. Plain buttresses line the north wall, with steps leading to a plain basement doorway and a semi-circular headed doorway to the west wall.

The nave's north wall contains a single light square-headed window and a two-light window at the west end with segmental heads. The west window is a tall chamfered mullioned four-light window with transoms beneath plain drip moulds.

Interior

The organ occupies the west end, above which stands a 19th-century font with a circular bowl decorated with foliage, mounted on a moulded stem. The nave features late 19th-century roof trusses. A window in the nave north wall retains medieval splayed reveals. The chancel arch has a stepped profile with a roll moulding to its inner arch. A reset medieval piscina occupies the chancel wall (disturbed during demolition of the earlier east end in 1967 as part of remodelling). A 19th-century double seat and piscina appear in the south wall. Early 20th-century screens occupy the chancel arch, and a screen of 1938 closes off the south aisle chapel.

To the south of the chancel arch stands a taping stone slab, possibly a reset coffin cover, inscribed in Norman French in Lombardic characters in memory of Julia, wife of Adam Francis (d.1250). An incised alabaster slab against the transeptal south chapel wall commemorates Robert Barley (d.1467) and his wife, though they are actually buried at All Saints, Derby. A hatchement and Charity boards are positioned by the south doorway.