Corpus Christi Church And Presbytery

Corpus Christi Church and Presbytery is a church built between 1873 and 1874 by Frederick Hyde Pownall. It is constructed of stock brick with stone dressings and features slate roofs, designed in the Early English style. The building has a rectangular plan with a ritual west narthex at the north end facing the street, topped by a massive square tower. The upper stage of the tower includes clasping buttresses and a corbel table, with three tall stone-dressed lights featuring gabled arches on colonettes. A short pyramidal slate spire with small lucarnes crowns the tower.

The church entrance is a moulded and chamfered pointed arch that opens into a vaulted passage, located in the ground floor of the adjoining presbytery on the left. The presbytery itself has a plain design, spanning four storeys and four windows wide. It features flat stone heads above narrow sash windows set beneath relieving arches, with the third-floor windows designed as stone gabled half dormers.

Inside the church, there is a four-bay nave beyond the narthex, with aisles and a two-bay sanctuary flanked by chapels. The interior includes lancet lights and plate tracery, along with an open arched collar-braced king post timber roof. The brick walls and stone dressings have been painted. Notable features include an elaborate reredos and altar made of Caen stone by Earp, as well as a medieval octagonal stone font that reflects the Early English style.