Roman Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul, Presbytery and Salter's Hall

Roman Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul, Presbytery and Salter's Hall

A Roman Catholic church and presbytery built in 1832 by Joseph Potter of Lichfield, funded by the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury. The church incorporates Early English Gothic style and is constructed of red brick with sandstone dressings and small brown tiles. The presbytery was rebuilt and enlarged around 1832 and incorporates seventeenth-century remnants of Salter's Hall. A west porch and baptistery were added in 1913.

The church forms a rectangular, five-bay building with the sanctuary in the eastern bay and a gallery in the western nave. A two-storey presbytery with attic and four bays is attached to the geographical south side. The buildings are set back from the road with a unified front elevation facing east, comprising the presbytery on the left and the liturgical west end of the church on the right.

The exteriors are built of red brick in Flemish bond with stone dressings, brick plinths with stone coping, and moulded stone eaves coping and cornices. The tall gable wall of the church is balanced by a gabled outer bay of the presbytery, both flanking three central bays with small gablets. A small stone bellcote sits at the apex of the church gable. A brick buttress separates church from house, though brickwork courses through across the elevation.

The ground floor features a projecting triple-gabled porch with a central pointed-arch doorway with moulded stone surround and hood mould, fitted with timber double doors. In the gable apex is a small circular window with cross tracery. Flanking the doorway are two canopied statue niches containing statues of St Peter and St Paul. The two outer gables are mirror-images, each with an outer buttress, a four-light pointed-arch window, and a mandorla window with tracery in the gable apex. Windows have small-pane leaded glazing. The centre of the main west wall contains a large rose window with Decorated Gothic tracery. At the gable apex is a canopied statue niche holding a statue of Mary and the Baby Jesus.

The presbytery has a gable stack and two ridge stacks, all with tall octagonal Tudor-style chimneys. The third bay features a Tudor-arched doorway with stone surround and hood mould, and a reinforced timber door with vertical nailed battens. Ground floor windows in the second and fourth bays are three-light with square-headed stone hood moulds, stone frames and slender mullions with pointed-arch heads to the lights; the first bay has a similar two-light window. First floor windows in all four bays are two-light. The first-bay gable and gablets in the second, third, and fourth bays feature small pointed-arch lancet windows in stone frames.

The liturgical south elevation of the church (geographical north) comprises five bays divided by brick buttresses, each with a tall pointed-arch lancet in a stone frame with hood mould. The liturgical east end is blind. The liturgical north elevation is largely obscured by the presbytery, though a single tall pointed-arch lancet appears at the right-hand end, with a pointed-arch doorway within a timber corner conservatory. The presbytery rear elevation has a wide, slightly-projecting gabled third bay with windows matching those on the front; the ground floor of the first and second bays is obscured by the conservatory. A lean-to timber conservatory on brick dwarf walls has a wide gabled doorway onto the garden and incorporates stained glass panels, a date panel of 1884, initials I R, and a metal sunflower finial. The structure is in poor repair with some glass panels replaced by plastic sheeting. The presbytery south-side elevation has two gables and similar windows throughout.

Interior of the church features full-span arched timber trusses rising from corbels with a coffered ceiling of square panels. The trusses are decoratively painted and the coffered panels are painted green and red with gold decoration over the sanctuary. The nave has herringbone parquet flooring, with decorative encaustic tiles in the sanctuary and set into the uprights of the stepped stone plinth supporting the altar. Walls are plastered and painted white except for the sanctuary bay, which displays colourful stencilling to the dado in the manner of A W N Pugin.

The sanctuary contains a tall, shallow pointed-arch niche with moulded surround, flanked by two smaller niches with moulded surrounds and hood moulds. The niches are decorated with colourful stencilwork and gilding. The central niche holds a large painting of Christ on the Cross in an elaborate Gothic gilded frame, with a tabernacle shelf beneath. The flanking niches contain statues of Mary and the Baby Jesus and St Joseph. The high altar front panel is decorated in geometric patterns with religious motifs in the manner of cloisonné enamel in red, green, cream, blue and gold, bearing similarities with altars designed by Pugin. The north sanctuary contains an aumbry with marble surround and a relief-carved door with Gothic canopy. The single north sanctuary window and four south-wall windows contain stained glass depicting standing saints, designed by Margaret Rope in 1912-18.

Towards the west end of the south wall is a memorial designed in medieval manner with two slightly sunken panels overlaid with a Gothic frame forming two arches, featuring painted relief carvings of Mary and Baby Jesus and a kneeling woman praying. The west end of the nave has a timber gallery with a pierced front panel displaying Gothic detailing. The original pointed-arch west entrance doorway now opens into the porch. To its left is a statue niche, and to its right is a wide archway with half-height decorative iron gates opening into the baptistery.

The baptistery features herringbone parquet flooring and an octagonal stone font with Gothic quatrefoil carving. A three-light window connects the baptistery and porch. The porch contains an inner pointed-arch doorway with moulded stone surround and hood moulding leading through to the original west doorway. The right-hand side opens via a wide archway into a small room.

The presbytery contains features said to survive from the seventeenth-century Salter's Hall, though apart from exposed ceiling beams, fixtures and fittings are nineteenth-century. These include a Tudor-arched mantelpiece on the ground floor and a timber staircase with turned balusters and square newel posts with shaped finials.