Church Of Saint Chad

Anglican parish church built 1925–27 by C E Batenian, with a side chapel added in 1977 by Erie Marriner. The building is constructed from Horton stone cut as rubble and laid in rough thin courses, with steel framing to the arcade and roof, timber to the windows, and a roof of concrete tiles.

The church comprises a chancel and nave under one roof, forming virtually a simple rectangle in plan. The chancel is distinguished from the nave only by more elaborate window treatment and by being narrowed at its eastern end by passage aisles, which create two re-entrant angles at the cast end. These angles contain ogee-headed entrances under bracketed canopies.

All windows throughout feature flat arches with wooden mullions and, in the chancel, transoms as well. The three-light window to the east end sits under a relieving arch, with a corbelled statue of Christ in the gable above. On the north side of the chancel is a single three-light window with one transom, followed by a two-storey vestry and organ chamber projecting like a transept, which has two two-light windows to the chamber with cornice and parapet above. The nave features seven three-light windows positioned high like a clerestory on both north and south sides. A low gabled porch with timber framing occupies the north-west corner, with a pair of doors decorated with elaborate iron strap hinges. On the south side, three three-light windows with two transoms serve the chancel, followed by seven three-light windows for the nave.

At chancel level and extending into the first bay of the nave is a flat-roofed side chapel in Hornton stone, featuring an ogee-headed door under a stone canopy and six flat-arched windows on its south side. The west end is constructed in common red brick and left incomplete, suggesting a tower was originally intended.

The interior forms a single continuous space with arcades running almost its entire length, creating narrow passage aisles. The arcade columns are circular and constructed of steel clad in dressed, rock-faced stone, with primitive capitals. The three-bay chancel is marked off from the seven-bay nave by a step and a broader column at the division point, with richer decoration in the chancel ceiling.

The east end features a late Gothic reredos of painted and gilded wood rising the full height of the church. It embraces a quasi-mosaic picture in three panels over the altar, surmounted by a three-light east window filled with stained glass in late Arts and Crafts manner, possibly by Henry Payne. Above this sits a richly panelled canopy. Flanking the reredos are depictions of Saint Chad and Saint Winifred in painted niches. The altar has riddel posts decorated with chevrons and surmounted by trumpeting angels, with its front featuring panels of late Gothic stencilling interspersed with depictions of saints in raised and gilded plaster.

An organ gallery occupies the north side of the chancel, now slightly altered with the console removed. The pointed-arched ceiling over the chancel is suspended from steel trusses and decorated with low-relief plasterwork in an ornate trellis pattern filled with trailing vines and ears of corn. The ceiling over the passage aisles is panelled, while the nave ceiling displays a simpler trellis pattern of trailing roses. An octagonal font, contemporary with the church, features a spired canopy suspended from a decorative cantilevered beam.

A church hall of approximately 1970, contiguous with the church, is not of special architectural interest.