Church Of St Mary And St Peter

The Church of St Mary and St Peter is a parish church dating from 1864, designed by James Fowler in the Early English style. It is constructed of rockfaced ironstone with limestone ashlar dressings and banded slate roofs. The church consists of a nave with a western bellcote, transepts, a chancel, a south porch, and a vestry.

The west end features a large circular window with geometric tracery, a rounded moulded head, and angle shafts. A single gabled bellcote with side shafts and pointed arched openings sits atop the gable. The north wall of the nave has three paired lancet windows with trefoil heads, trefoils above, and moulded hoods. A similar window is present in the west wall of the transept. The transept's north wall incorporates a three-light window with geometric tracery in the head. A faceted stack with a moulded top rises from the east gable of the nave, and the vestry’s east wall contains a two-light window. The chancel’s east window is of three lights, featuring a trefoil centre light and steeply arched side lights with cusped heads, all within a traceried roundel and pointed frame. The chancel’s south wall exhibits gabled buttresses, a pair of two-light windows, and a shouldered priest’s door set under a slightly advanced, pitched bay. A further two-light window is located on the east side of the transept, and the south wall contains a three-light window with intersecting tracery and cusping. All nave windows match those on the north side, and all windows have concave moulded hoods with floriate stops.

The gabled south porch has a richly moulded outer doorway with paired angle shafts having foliate capitals, an unusual trefoil head with foliate cusps, an outer roll moulding, and an inner order of dog toothing. It includes stone side benches. The pointed inner doorway has a double roll moulded surround, concave moulded hood with floriate stops, and a chequered redbrick and ashlar flush outer arch. The transept arches are polychromatic, constructed with red and blue brick and ashlar voussoirs, foliate corbels, and dog tooth brick outer order and hood. The chancel arch has paired collared columns to reveals, a foliate hood, and polychromatic brickwork. Within the nave, a vesica-shaped sunk panel commemorates the contribution of Edward Cooper, former vicar, to the church’s rebuilding in 1864. A single chamfered pointed arch with a moulded brick hood leads to the vestry from the north wall of the chancel. Further east is an elaborate gabled aumbry with angle shafts, and a doorway with a stilted arched head is found in the south wall. The reredos is constructed of ashlar, marble, and mosaic. Interior fittings are 19th century, including a panelled ashlar pulpit adorned with symbols of the evangelists and a delicate brass lectern. The circular font bowl and moulded base are also 19th century, although the clustered shafts of the middle section date back to the 14th century.