Church of St Martin and St Paul

Church of St Martin and St Paul

A church built in 1837-38, designed in Commissioners' Gothic style by Robert Ebbles. The building is constructed of red brick laid in garden wall bond with stone dressings and a slate and lead roof.

The site slopes towards the north, which serves as the ritual east end. The church is oriented north-west to south-east, with the north-west acting as the ritual eastern end. The building comprises a western tower, a seven-bay nave, a shallow eastern chancel, a low vestry projecting at the eastern end, and a western lobby with flanking spiral stairs leading to a gallery that surrounds three sides of the nave.

The tower has diagonal buttresses and three stages. The western face features a central doorway with panelled double doors under a flat arch with a fanlight. Rectangular staircase turrets project from the west end of the nave on either side, with small lancets to their upper walls. The middle stage of the tower contains a three-light window with stone panel tracery, with lancets flanking the tower. The top stage has a louvered lancet belfry opening on each side, with a battlemented parapet featuring crocketed finials at the corners.

The nave bays are lit by lancet windows with cast metal lattice tracery, divided by buttresses with offsets. The solid parapet has a string course to its lower body and a moulded coping. Metal weather moulds above the lancets appear to be later additions. The eastern end has lancet lights flanking the shallow chancel bay, which is lit by a four-light window with traceried head. The low vestry projects in front of the chancel with a three-light window to its centre and a parapet with moulded bands.

The interior entrance lobby beneath the west tower leads to a further lobby beneath the deep western gallery. The nave has galleries to three sides with panelled fronts supported on painted cast-iron columns. A staircase well in the south-west corner leads down to the crypt and may be a later addition. A false ceiling was inserted in the later 20th century at the level of the top of the gallery fronts. The galleries are accessed by their original open-well winder staircases at the western end and retain their original arrangement of boxed pews to the sides, featuring panelled doors and hymnal shelves. One surviving metal gas lamp support stands at the centre of the south side. The original nave roof, now obscured by the false ceiling but still intact, comprises four-centred arched trusses between each bay with pierced traceried spandrels resting on moulded wall brackets. The chancel features a pair of commandment boards set in painted aedicular frames on the western wall, forming a reredos above the altar. A stone Gothic font, now painted, was gifted by a parishioner in 1870. Two parish rooms were formed around 1985 at the rear of the nave and western gallery, with the ground floor room also containing a kitchen and lavatories along its northern wall.

Pursuant to section 1(5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, those parts inserted around 1985—including the breeze block wall to the rear of the nave, the suspended ceiling at the level of the top of the panelled gallery front, and the lavatories, kitchen and their stud wall divisions forming part of the ground floor parish room to the ritual north side of the rear of the nave—are declared not to be of special architectural or historic interest.