Church of St Mark and boundary walls to Stoney Stanton Lane and Bird Street

Church of St Mark and boundary walls to Stoney Stanton Lane and Bird Street

The Church of St Mark is built of coursed, rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings, stone-coped gables and tiled roofs. The building is oriented north-east to south-west, though compass directions are used throughout. It comprises a clerestoried nave, lean-to aisles, a chancel with a lower ridge than the nave, a south vestry, a north porch, a north organ chamber and a bell-cote over the west end of the north aisle. A church hall of 1962 lies parallel to the south aisle but is not of special interest.

The exterior displays Early English characteristics of the 13th century. The five-bay, clerestoried nave rises over five-bay, lean-to aisles with a narrower chancel set at a lower ridge line. The west end of the aisles, the north porch and the east end have angled buttresses with offsets. Diagonal buttresses divide the aisle bays and frame the west door. A chamfered plinth and sill course of ashlar run around the entire building. The west end features a pointed, double doorway with paired jamb shafts beneath a gabled hood mould, surrounded by two chamfered orders. Above the doorway are a pair of two-light, plate-traceried windows with cusped lights and trefoils. The gable contains a circular window. Set over the west end of the north aisle is a double bell-cote formed of two lancets with a tiled roof surmounted by the base from a former cross finial; the original single bell has been removed. The west end of the aisles, aisle bays (except the westernmost), the clerestory and the organ chamber contain two-light, plate-traceried windows with cusped lights. The aisles and chancel have quatrefoils in these windows; the clerestory has plain circles. The west end of the north aisle contains a gabled porch with a pointed doorway, jamb shafts and a surround of a single chamfered order. The original window opening to the bay at the west end of the south aisle was converted into a doorway in 1962 to provide access to the church hall. Around 1973, the original window opening to the north wall of the organ chamber was formed into a doorway with a low disabled access ramp. The east end of the church is blind, following the blocking up of the east window after wartime damage.

The interior features a five-bay nave arcade of pointed, double-chamfered arches carried on round piers and responds with large, crocketed capitals. The chancel arch is similar but is carried on two brackets in the form of capitals. Most of the roof structure is hidden by a false ceiling inserted around 1973, but a section is visible over the chancel where paired hammer-beam trusses rise from wide stone corbels and support lateral braces connecting to the purlins. The ceiling is boarded with chevron patterning over the east end. Although most internal fixtures and fittings were removed around 1973, the interior is notable for a mural painted on the altar wall by German artist Hans Feibusch. Painted between 1962 and 1963 in a free expressionist style, it measures approximately 12 metres high by 6 metres wide and depicts the Ascension of Christ into Heaven.

A boundary wall of coursed, rock-faced sandstone with stone copings encloses the church on the north and west sides.