Church Of St Stephen

Church of St Stephen

Parish church dating from the 13th century, substantially rebuilt in 1870 by James Fowler. The building is constructed of red brick with limestone ashlar dressings and greenstone ashlar bands. Slate roofs are fitted with decorative red ridge tiles, ashlar coped gables, and cross finials.

The plan comprises a nave with a south porch, an apsidal chancel with a south vestry, and a bell turret. An ashlar dressed plinth runs around the entire church. Regularly spaced ashlar dressed buttresses support the walls.

The west front features ashlar dressed, two-stage angle buttresses and a moulded ashlar string course. The west window reuses some 13th-century fragments and has a pointed head with two pointed lights, a cusped vesica, a hood mould, and 13th-century head label stops. A blind cusped panel sits above. A three-stage north-west buttress incorporates reused 13th-century crocketed and finialled gables, with a tall 19th-century ashlar octagonal chimney above, pierced by small pointed openings.

The north side of the nave has a moulded ashlar string course. A broad, pointed ashlar dressed window to the west contains three pointed lights with upper secondary pointed heads, hood mould, and foliate label stops. A pair of pointed windows to the east each has two pointed lights with geometrical tracery.

The apsidal chancel is lit on the west by a pair of ashlar dressed cusped lancets. Single pointed cusped lights flank a rectangular east window containing three pointed cusped lights with small block motifs in the spandrels. A blind quatrefoiled plaque sits beneath.

The south vestry is partly engaged to a slender brick and ashlar bell turret with an east doorway having a caernarvon head and plank door. Above is an ashlar dressed slit light, with a bell opening above featuring a pointed head, nook shafts, and shaft rings. A stone spirelet crowns the turret. The south side of the vestry has a rectangular two-light window with trefoiled tracery. An ornate polygonal chimney with blind traceried arcading and a gable rises from a buttress to the west.

The south side of the nave has two pointed windows: that to the east with two lights, that to the west with three lights, both featuring geometric tracery, hood mould, and head label stops.

The south porch has a steep gable with single east and west trefoil-headed lights and squat gabled angle buttresses. The pointed doorway has an inner chamfered order with head and jambs in one piece, an outer order with chamfered jambs and bowtell moulded head, hood mould, and ornate label stops. A blind plate traceried oculus sits above.

The interior south doorway has a pointed head, chamfered surround, hood mould, and dove and squirrel label stops. The interior west wall preserves a reused 13th-century moulded string course. Ashlar bands run along the north and south walls. The south doorway has a keeled hood mould and kings' head label stops.

North-east windows of the nave are divided by a free-standing shaft with moulded capital. A tall pointed chancel arch with an inner moulded order supported by ornate corbels opens to the chancel. The hood mould continues over the wall to north and south. A pointed organ arch on the north side of the chancel has an inner order supported on ornate shafts, possibly reusing medieval masonry, with an outer order of ashlar dressed brick. The ashlar hood mould with fillet may reuse medieval fragments. A small pointed doorway to the east has a plank door.

A moulded ashlar string course and decorated eaves run around the apse. Small sedilia beneath the window in the south wall has a pointed arch on each side and panelled back. An ornate reredos contains three pointed openings divided by free-standing shafts with three trefoil-headed arches beneath, chamfered spandrels, coloured marble shafts, and ornate tiled backs. An ashlar dressed piscina sits beneath the north window.

Interior fittings include a tall 19th-century candelabra, a 19th-century drum font of eight large rolls supported on eight moulded columns, a stone pulpit with single shaft bearing a shaft ring and quatrefoiled panel, and 20th-century pews.