Christ Church

Christ Church, Lichfield

A church built between 1844 and 1847 by architect Thomas Johnson, with transepts added in 1886–87 by M Holding for Mrs Ellen Hinckley. The building is constructed of rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings and has a fishscale tile roof.

The church follows a cruciform plan in the Decorated style. It comprises a 2-bay chancel with transepts and a 3-bay nave with a west tower. The design features a plinth, sill courses, and plain coped parapets with coped gables. Gabled diagonal buttresses and window hoods with head stops are characteristic of the exterior.

The chancel has a corbelled parapet and is lit by a 3-light window with Flowing tracery. Similar 2-light windows appear on the north and south sides, with adjacent transept east windows also present. The transept north and south windows are 3-light with reticulated tracery, while the west projections have 2-light north and south windows with geometrical tracery and entrances to the west.

The north transept contains a pointed tomb recess with 3 cusped panels over a chest, commemorating Samuel Seckham, creator of Park Town, Oxford, and members of his family.

The nave has gabled buttresses and 2-light windows with geometrical tracery. The tower features a west entrance with a moulded arch and paired doors, a 3-light window with Flowing tracery, and an upper lancet with a clock face. Above are 2-light louvred bell openings with a sill course, topped with a traceried frieze and embattled parapet with pinnacles.

Internally, the nave and chancel have pointed tunnel vaults. The chancel arch springs from responds, with arches to the transepts dying into the jambs; similar treatment applies to the arches from the nave to the transepts. The west end features a gallery to the tower arch, with an 1887 wrought-iron chancel screen now ex-situ.

The chancel contains an octagonal timber pulpit with tracery panels and a 1906 reredos by GF Bodley, featuring a lower stencilled calvary cross, an upper crucifixion and figures beneath nodding ogee heads, a vine trail cornice, and rich brattishing. The north transept has a timber altar, while the south transept retains an 1877 reredos to the former altar with applied arches, marble cross, and shafts. The nave features encaustic tiles and an octagonal font with a squat stem and tracery panels.

The chancel roof was painted in 1897 by JD Batten with Old Testament figures and symbols of the Passion and Eucharist. The nave contains a war memorial.

Stained glass includes a 1920 east window by Kempe and Tower. The 1870s and 1880s north and south chancel windows and transept east windows were created by Hardman and Co, as were nave south windows. The north transept has a 1894 northwest window by CE Kempe and a 1901 northeast window by HW Bryans, with an 1889 nave window to General Phillips also by Hardman and Co.