Church Of Saint Peter

Church of St Peter

This church was built in two phases. The principal part dates to 1905, as recorded on the foundation stone, and was designed by the architects Cossins, Peacock and Bewley, with Thomas Elvins as builder. The westernmost twenty feet of the nave and aisles, together with the tower, were added in 1935.

The building is constructed in red brick with dressings of buff terracotta, with a slate roof. The plan comprises a chancel, nave, north and south transepts, north and south aisles, a south-west tower, north-east vestries, and a south-east organ chamber.

The sanctuary takes the form of a five-sided apse under a lower roof than the choir, with a window in each of the chamfered walls and an embattled parapet decorated with chequerwork in brick and buff terracotta. The east window sits in the gable to the choir, with two further windows to the north of the choir. All chancel windows are pointed-arched with hollow chamfers to the brick reveals. Most are two lights with rectilinear tracery under hoodmoulds having foliage stops, except the east window which has five lights. The transepts have angle and centre buttresses with moulded terracotta offsets, and feature two pointed-arched windows each with rectilinear tracery and hoodmoulds.

The aisles span two-and-a-half bays, divided by buttresses, with segmental-arched windows displaying rectilinear tracery: two windows of three lights and one lancet. The clerestory contains seven flat-arched windows, six of two lights with alternating tracery patterns and one of one light. The entrance to the north aisle is located in the westernmost bay, set under a segmental pointed arch with chamfered reveals, multi-moulded archivolt, hoodmould, foliage stops, and a panelled door with ornate wrought-iron hinges.

The west end is pierced by three flat-arched windows (the middle one of two lights) with a rose window above featuring tracery in the form of a cross and sexfoiled circles. The windows are linked by a pattern of tiles set on edge which rises into the gable. The west entrance sits slightly forward beneath the tower within a deep portal of multi-ordered archivolt set within decorative brickwork. The tower itself rises in three stages with setback buttresses, except for a polygonal stair tower on the south-west corner. The belfry stage has louvres under geometrical tracery in a pointed-arched opening, and the parapet features an open, arcaded balustrade at the centre of each side. A church hall of recent date stands to the south of the tower and is not of special architectural interest.

Internally, the sanctuary is divided from the choir by a broad, elaborately moulded pointed arch, which forms the most striking feature of the interior. A marble reredos in late Gothic manner embellishes the sanctuary, with panelling featuring brattishing to the sanctuary and north side of the choir. An organ case in late Gothic manner sits on the south side of the choir. The choir stalls are possibly contemporary with the church. The chancel arch is multi-ordered and constructed of brick. The nave arcade spans four-and-a-half bays with octagonal stone columns having two broad faces that die into the pointed arches without capitals. The impost is of stone, and the arcade above is of red brick with a cornice at clerestory level. Stone lesenes, followed by brick, run from the inner faces of the arcade to corbels supporting alternate roof trusses.

North and south two-bay transepts feature a small chapel on the east side of the north transept, embellished with an elaborate late Gothic reredos of 1932 inlaid with a triptych painting of the Resurrection by Sidney Meteyard. The ceiling here is decorated with stencilling and gilded plasterwork. North and south vestibules occupy the west end, where the west window is set in a slight recess with a face decorated in patterns of brick and tiles set on edge. The nave roof comprises hammer-beam trusses. The church contains fine stained glass in the sanctuary, over the sanctuary arch, and in the west rose window. Four lights below the west window are filled with glass of 1932, probably by Sidney Meteyard.