Christ Church, Including Lychgate And Boundary Wall

Christ Church, on School Road in Yardley Wood, is an Anglican church designed by architect A. E. Perkins in the Early English style and built in 1848. The west tower was completed in 1896.

The church is constructed of coursed, roughly dressed red sandstone with a slate roof. The interior walls are exposed grey stone.

The building follows a cruciform plan with a nave, chancel, north and south transepts, a west tower, and west and south galleries to the chancel. There are no aisles. The exterior features a slender stone tower at the west end topped with a broach stone spire and lucarnes. A gable-ended porch with a pointed arched doorway projects from the base of the tower. The four-bay nave is lit by four lancet windows separated by buttresses. Pairs of lancet windows light the transept gable ends, a triple lancet window lights the east end, and a single lancet window sits above the porch to the west. Angle buttresses with set-offs sit at the corners. A lean-to vestry is attached to the north transept, and the south transept has a church office with a gallery above. The south wall features a pair of windows within moulded red sandstone pointed arch openings with splayed stone cills.

Inside, the nave is spanned by an arch-braced collar-rafter roof with king post, the rafters left exposed and painted white. The west gallery has a panelled front supported on wooden posts, with two small rooms beneath it separated by a glazed screen arcade. The nave contains 19th-century pews with small doors at the ends. The chancel features an elaborate geometric tiled floor, choir stalls, and inserted 17th-century Baroque panelling that conceals the east window. This panelling is richly carved with gilded garlands and putti, with sedilia on the north and south sides of the sanctuary. A stone pulpit with stone arcading and marble shafts stands in the nave. An octagonal stone font with chamfered detailing to the bowl sits in the south transept. Stained glass memorial windows are dated 1861, 1873, 1874, 1877 and 1879.

The church was built in 1848 at a cost of £1,550 and consecrated on 28 March 1849 by the Bishop of Worcester. The stones are reputed to have come from a manor house in Bromsgrove. A lychgate built in 1880 and the church's boundary wall are memorials to Christ Church's first vicar, Alfred Clifton. The church clock and bell were completed in 1896. A brass lectern was given in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. The sanctuary was enlarged in 1910. The 17th-century panelling in the chancel was originally given by the Earl of Denbigh to St Bartholomew's Church, Birmingham and may originally have been made for his family home, Newnham Paddox (demolished 1952).

The church retains its boundary wall and has a substantial cemetery. A lychgate dating from 1880 stands to the north-east of the church.