Roman Catholic Church of St Francis and attached former Presbytery

Roman Catholic Church of St Francis and attached former Presbytery

This Roman Catholic church and adjoining former presbytery were built in 1794, with alterations carried out in the 1830s and late 20th century.

The church is constructed of red brick with mostly ashlar dressings, though the pinnacles have been replaced with concrete ones. The roofs are finished in plain tiles. The building is cruciform in plan, oriented north-east to south-west, and comprises a porch, nave, chancel, transepts, gallery, and sacristy. The attached former presbytery to the south-west end is L-shaped, with its roof meeting the church roof at right angles at the west end.

The church exterior features Y-tracery windows throughout, except for the east window which has three lights with complex cusped tracery. Diagonal buttresses with stone offsets are positioned at the transepts and east end, topped with concrete pinnacles. The north-west elevation displays a full-height gabled porch with stone coping and kneelers, surmounted by a finial in cruciform shape. The porch entrance is a four-centred arch with a pair of wooden doors and a two-light window above, flanked on either side by three-light windows; the left window is flanked by buttresses. The transept window contains two lights. The south-east elevation has a mid-20th-century small addition to the west side of the transept, with a two-light window to the transept and a three-light window to the nave.

The attached house to the west is of two storeys with a dentilled eaves cornice and brick gable stacks. Its principal south-west elevation has a central entrance with a panelled door and semi-circular fanlight, flanked by twelve-pane sash windows, with three six-pane sash windows on the first floor.

Internally, a staircase to the west gallery is positioned inside the porch. Modern glazed doors lead into the area beneath the gallery, which has been divided into a reconciliation room in the south half and a small narthex. The west wall contains a pointed niche and a Gothic panelled, segmental-headed door to the sacristy. The nave and chancel have a continuous segmental ceiling with a thin wooden chancel arch, while the shallow north and south transepts are ceiled at a lower level with a sharper profile. The east window glass is by Hardman and Sons, installed around 1983 during a church reordering. The sanctuary floor is tiled with new Minton tiles dating from 1994, surplus to the reflooring of St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, though some original quarry tiles remain under the west gallery. The 19th-century stone octagonal font has shields on each face and a thin octagonal broached stem. A wall memorial commemorates Reverend Gasper Bricknell, died 1833. At the west end of the nave, on shelves flanking the gallery balustrade, stand two angels holding shields with Passion symbols, which previously flanked the high altar until 1971. The house interior was not inspected at the time of listing in 2015.