Church of the Sacred Heart and Boundary Walls

Church of the Sacred Heart and Boundary Walls

This is a substantial Roman Catholic church built in red brick with stone dressings, under clay tile roofs. The building comprises a rectangular aisled nave with north and south aisles, an apsidal chancel to the east, and a gallery at the west end. A sacristy is attached to the south flank via a brick passage.

The west front facing Jasper Street is an imposing three-bay composition. The central bay rises as the tall gable end of the nave, decorated with stone banding and dominated by a prominent first-floor pointed-arched window with circular tracery enclosing a cinquefoil. Below this runs a row of lancet windows. The steeply-pitched gable of a projecting porch, topped with a finial, breaks through these lancets. The porch contains a double doorway within a heavy recessed surround with nook-shafts and stone towers flanking either side. The tympanum displays a relief figure of Christ revealing the Sacred Heart set within a trefoil-headed niche, with a roundel on each side.

The bays to either side are of lower height with pyramidal roofs and brick buttresses with stone offsets. Their ground-floor windows are pointed-arched with stopped hood moulds and keyed architraves; above these are blank lancet arcades. To the right of the central doorway stands a brick tower with stone banding, slit openings across three floors, and an arcaded stone spire above.

The flank elevations continue the architectural language with pointed-arched windows topped by blank arcades. The north flank features a porch to the baptistry. The north and south aisles are attached with four traceried windows each, separated by buttresses. Above the aisles, the nave elevations display four sets of paired windows at clerestorey level with stopped moulds. The north and south transepts each have a large central window with sexfoil tracery, and blank arcade and brick cross details in their gable ends. The corner buttresses have stone offsets. The chapels and apsidal chancel at the east end are of lower height with stone dressings to the windows. The apse features slender buttresses at each corner and above the attached chapel roofs. Many roof gables carry a cross finial. The sacristy is a plainly-detailed single-storey building adjoining the nave via a brick passage.

A low red brick wall with stone copings and decorative stone pier caps lines Jasper Street and Downey Street. The railings have been removed.

Internally, the rectangular aisled nave has two-bay stone arcades comprising three columns to each side with stiff leaf capitals in various designs, some incorporating sunflowers. Colonnettes rise to clerestorey level and stone corbels support the timber vaulted roof trusses.

The chancel and chapels at the east end are richly decorated. The gilded stone altar and reredos of the chancel feature statuary and mosaic decoration with colourful painted biblical scenes in relief, framed by an arcade. At the centre stands a Christ figure within a niche under a heavy surround, below a tall gilt tower in the Gothic style. The upper walls and ceiling of the apse have decorative tiling and gilding. At the front of the chancel is a carved marble altar rail, with a stone and marble pulpit to the right. The pulpit has rich mosaic detailing and stands on truncated marble columns. To the right of the pulpit, behind the south chapel, stands an organ with pipes rising above the chapel's mosaic-tiled and gilded altar. Both chapels have marble fittings including altar rails, reredos with biblical depictions, and stencilled walls.

The baptistry in the west end of the north aisle contains a carved stone font on a plinth, standing behind iron railings. Framed pictorial Stations of the Cross line the nave walls above a tiled dado, interrupted by pointed-arched doorways of oak. Late 19th-century pews are arranged in regular straight lines. Above the west end of the nave is a gallery with a carved oak balustrade, supported by oak brackets. Below the gallery are double oak doors and oak partitioning. Windows throughout the church have coloured panes; those in the apse and north chapel feature figurative stained glass. The floors are decoratively tiled.