Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter, Storer Road, Loughborough

A church built between 1910 and 1912, designed by WS Weatherley of London and GH Barrowcliff of the firm Barrowcliff and Allcock, Loughborough. The Lady Chapel was added in 1958 by Albert Herbert of Leicester. The church is constructed of local Mountsorrel granite rubble with stone dressings and a plain tile roof with stone coped gables featuring kneelers and finials.

The building is Gothic in style with buttresses set with offsets. It consists of a nave and chancel in one, with a north Lady Chapel and south organ chamber and vestry. Narrow passage aisles flank the nave, and there are north and south porches. The chancel has a 7-light east window with Decorated tracery and 2-light windows to north and south. The Lady Chapel has 3-light windows. The organ chamber to the south has a 2-light window and an ashlar gabled bell-cote positioned over the vestry, which has flat-arched windows and a curving parapet. The nave comprises 5 bays and is lit by 4 sets of 3-light clerestory windows on either side over the aisles, which themselves have narrow lancets. The north and south porches are similar in design, each with a moulded arch and double doors decorated with elaborate metalwork. The west end features a 7-light west window with fine Decorated tracery.

The interior has walls of buff-coloured rendered plaster with Ancaster stone dressings. The east window contains fine stained glass. A wooden reredos designed by Weatherley features a carved and panelled altar canopy with riddle posts topped by angel finials. There are elaborate sedilia and a piscine in the south wall. The church retains carved choir stalls and communion rails. The organ, dated 1913, has a panelled and carved case. The chancel roof is panelled and boarded. A carved wooden pulpit stands on a stone base. The nave arcades comprise moulded arches dying into hexagonal piers with shafts rising to a panelled and boarded nave roof, with similar aisle roofs. The aisle lancets are filled with stained glass of the 1920s and 1930s. An unusual font of beaten copper and iron is present. A First World War memorial on the west wall was designed by Weatherley and made by Robinsons of Marsham Street, London. It comprises a triptych with the names of the Fallen on the inner panel and panels depicting Saints George and Michael on the inner sides of the doors.

This church replaced an earlier mission church built in 1889 and extended in 1892 to serve a new community that developed following the establishment of housing for workers employed by Messenger and Co., a large supplier of greenhouses and agricultural machinery.