Roman Catholic Church of St Mary and St Modwen

Roman Catholic Church of St Mary and St Modwen

This Roman Catholic church was built in 1878–9 by J Knight Morley to designs of John Young of London. The building is in a Decorated Gothic style, with a tower added by local architect Mr Mills, completed in 1897. The interior was re-ordered in 1975.

The church is constructed of red brick, rendered to the aisles, with Stanton stone dressings and slate roofs. It is orientated north-west to south-east and consists of an aisled nave of five bays with aisles, a sanctuary with north and south sacristies (the north sacristy added in 1960), and a north-west tower. There are 20th-century extensions to the south sacristy.

The west façade facing the street features a large round traceried window in the gable above two canopied niches containing statues of St Mary and St Modwen. The large pointed west doorway was inserted in 1962 with a reconstituted stone surround, replacing two windows. The tower has clasping corner buttresses, a door in the south face, and a two-light window to the west above a battered plinth. The upper two stages of the tower, completed in 1897, are in a Free Gothic style with two levels of openings linked by a stone frame. The short stone spire has flat corner broaches.

The nave aisles, originally flanked by buildings, have no windows except a two-light west window in the south aisle. The south aisle door is recessed and approached by a wooden porch enriched with French stained glass, probably displaced from the east window, which also serves the adjacent presbytery. The chancel east window has five lights below a central roundel with three foiled circles. There are two-light windows in the north wall of the chancel and similar windows in the east wall of each flanking chapel. The flat-roofed north sacristy was added in 1960. The south side has the original gabled vestry with two windows, extended southwards. The priest's sacristy overlaps the nave and chancel, linked to the presbytery to the west, with 20th-century flat-roofed extensions.

The interior displays early Gothic style reminiscent of around 1300. The nave has a large west organ gallery, now glazed below for a narthex. The organ gallery front is canted timber with a clock at the centre in a matching canted wooden casing; the 20th-century organ is by W Hawkins and Son of Walsall Wood. The steeply pitched nave roof is divided into five bays by six arched trusses rising from short wooden wall posts standing on gilded stone corbels just below the clerestory string course. Each bay has two clerestory lancet windows with trefoil tracery above tall four-centred moulded arcade arches rising from round-moulded capitals and polished granite columns said to be from Connemara, Ireland, though their mottled pink colour suggests they are more likely from Aberdeen, Scotland. Within each arcade spandrel is a short pink granite column with a gilded foliate corbel and capital supporting a painted statue. Eight statues of 1882 were carved by John Roddis of Birmingham.

The aisle walls are articulated by shouldered-arched recesses and the roof trusses are triangular. The former baptistery in the south-west corner has a 20th-century tiled floor and stained glass window. The north-west bay is the original west lobby entrance under the tower.

At the east end of each aisle is a small chapel, each with a Boulton of Cheltenham marble and stone altar and reredos (1898 Sacred Heart on the south, 1901 Lady Chapel to the north). The two-light windows were filled with glass in 1902 by Mayer of Munich. The font and pulpit at the east end of the nave are late 20th-century work. The tall chancel arch rises from moulded capitals on a corbelled pink marble shaft, its mouldings enriched with gilded square foliate paterae. The carved timber rood beam with painted figures is a First World War memorial. The original reredos and high altar were replaced by three reconstituted stone shelves in 1975. The stencilling around them and in the side chapels dates to around 2000. The stencilled dado is of 1879, and the sanctuary walls with figures of saints and martyrs and the Assumption scene over the chancel arch were painted by Jeffries Hopkins in 1889. A small pointed-arch door leads to the north sacristy; that to the south is now glazed. There is a two-light window in the north wall and a stone piscina to the south wall. Taller moulded stone arches rise from marble columns giving access to the side chapels. The stencilled chancel roof is divided into two bays by a pointed-arched truss rising from a foliate stone corbel.