Christ Church

Christ Church is a parish church built in 1864 by Messrs Elmslie. It is constructed of coursed red sandstone with limestone dressings and a limestone spire, and has tiled roofs. The building is cruciform in plan, comprising a two-bay nave, north porch and south vestry set off a polygonal chancel, and is detailed in the Geometrical style.

The chancel features single buttresses and 2-light traceried windows with 2-centred heads and labels with head stops. The vestry has shouldered jambs to its east doorway, a 2-light mullioned window with undulating soffit beneath a square head on the south elevation, a stack in its north-west corner, and a south-side cellar doorway with triangular head. The south transept is lit by two lancets with trefoiled tracery, labels and stops, beneath a large rose window containing three large and three small trefoils. The nave has windows with almost triangular heads containing three trefoiled lights to north and south, and a large 2-centred 3-light west window surmounted by a quatrefoil gable light.

The north porch has a crocketted gable hood spanning a deeply moulded 2-centred arch supported by a pair of attached columns with foliated capitals. Above this rises an open octagonal belfry with moulded strings at top and bottom, trefoiled tracery in 2-centred labelled openings to each face, and griffons sitting on the dividing string. The spire has a splayed base and lucarnes to the cardinal points near its top. The north transept has a 3-light window and two-light windows to east and west. The north doorway is moulded with a 2-centred head and attached columns; within the porch are single lancets to north and south, whilst above are four cushion-shaped corbels probably for an unexecuted stone vault. The ceiling above is boarded in softwood.

The nave roof is divided into four structural bays, two of which have collared arch brace scissor trusses rising from corbels below the wall-plates. The chancel roof features overlapping angle struts. A 2-centred moulded chancel arch with foliated label stops rests on two heavy capitals with detached columns supported on corbels.

The north-east, east and south-east windows depicting the Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection are in memory of Walter Baskerville Mynors, Rector from 1855 to 1896. The south transept contains a pipe organ by Eustace Ingram of London NW, dated 1882. A mid-19th-century pulpit of sandstone with six marble columns supporting a marble rail is octagonal in part. Two wall monuments to James and Rev Ralph Lochey, who died in 1822 and 1833 respectively, are located in the north transept; these were removed from the former Church of St John The Baptist.

The nave contains two south windows filled with Flemish or German 16th-century stained glass medallions. A cracked medieval bell bears the inscription "Missi de celis, habes nomen Gabrielis" in Lombardic lettering. A 17th-century font has a hemispherical bowl with four acanthus leaves rising from the bottom and a cylindrical stem with swags on a moulded circular base. A mid-17th-century chest has two front panels and end panels decorated with semi-circular motifs. A mid-19th-century font has a square base, moulded cylindrical stem and cylindrical bowl.