Church Of The Holy Cross

Church of the Holy Cross

Anglican church built in 1887-88, designed by Joseph Peacock for the Reverend Alfred Moore. The font is said to be a design by J.L. Pearson. Charles Nicholson made significant additions around 1913, including a rood beam, west organ loft, canopy over the altar, and other features. In 1936, following the demolition of the nearby church of St Jude's, some fittings from that building were brought here. A single-storey extension to the ritual east was added after 1945 and is not of special interest.

The exterior is constructed of yellow stock brick in Flemish bond with red banding inside, stone dressings both inside and out, and tiled roofs. The building includes a crypt. The plan comprises a chancel of two bays, north and south chapels treated as diminutive transepts (the south chapel originally serving as an organ chamber), an aisled nave of four bays, and a narthex of one shallow bay accessed through north and south porches. The style is spare Early English with lancet lights used almost exclusively. The most striking external feature is the nearly full-height narthex topped by an over-scaled bellcote, with the gabled roof of the west end rising behind it and pierced by a simple roundel. A consecration cross is set in the west face of the narthex, and a Great War Memorial Cross stands to the west of the north porch entrance. The clerestory has four lancets to each bay, with two lancets to each aisled bay below. The transept faces have two lancets below rose windows. The east end has five lancets. The exterior displays the quirky and aggressive style characteristic of Peacock's work.

The interior by contrast is very spare and elegant with subtly adjusted proportions. The nave is exceptionally broad for its length, and the aisles are very wide. An elevated choir and sanctuary are paved with red and black tiles set diagonally and enclosed by a simple wood screen which may be attributed to Nicholson. A painted wood canopy stands over the site of the original altar, which has been brought forward approximately one metre. The liturgical setting has otherwise not been modernised. Along the sill of the east window runs a blind stone arcade, painted, with blank areas filled with slightly faded paintings. The chancel arch ends in unusual corbel stops. A painted rood beam with figures intact sits just west of the chancel arch. Metal gates and screens enclose the side chapels. The north chapel contains a sanctuary of one shallow bay lit by a tripartite east window filled with glass depicting the Virgin Mary, with painted stone framing and blind side lights filled with adoring angels, said to have been partially repainted in the 1970s but to an original design. The nave is paved with wood blocks set in herringbone fashion along the line of the central aisle. Exceptionally fine late Victorian moveable benches furnish the nave. The wooden pulpit at the ritual north-east is of Jacobean design and may incorporate early 17th-century woodwork. A boarded pointed barrel vault covers the chancel, with lean-to roofs to the nave aisles carried on pointed transverse arches irregularly set. One of the interior's great glories is the braced king post roof in which the common rafters form scissor braces to the king post purlin. The west end of the nave is spanned by a single over-scaled pointed arch with spandrels pierced by one roundel each. The narthex beneath this arch has its west wall treated as a three-bay blank arcade, the centre recess of which serves as the Baptistery. A west organ gallery was installed under the west arch, with its console moved to the north-west corner of the nave in the early 1990s. Most glass is opaque except for the east window of the north chapel already noted and two windows in the south aisle at the east end. Mosaic Stations of the Cross are fixed to the walls.