Church Of St Mary And St Nicholas

The Church of St Mary and St Nicholas is a church built in 1836, with the tower and chancel added in 1848. It was designed by H.J. Underwood for Rev. J.H. Newman, who later became Cardinal Newman, and was extended by Joseph Clarke. The church is constructed of coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and features a steep-pitched tiled roof. It has a 4-bay aisleless nave and a chancel with a tower and vestry located to the north, all in the Early English style.

The nave includes lancet windows flanked by buttresses, and to the west, there is a double lancet window with plate-tracery. The west door features detached shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. The east window consists of three lancets adorned with dogtooth ornament and shafts. The three-stage tower has 2-light shafted openings with plate tracery in the top stage, accompanied by quatrefoil openings.

Inside, the chancel roof is composed of 4 bays with 5-sided coupled rafters and arched braces that rise from wooden angel corbels with elaborate bosses. The nave roof, which is not original, features 7-boarded trefoil trusses. A stone altar is positioned against richly-decorated and gilded arcading, with a triple sedilia located to the south. The lancet window to the north has an elaborate double-shafted rear arch with a trefoil head and dogtooth ornament.

A richly-carved oak screen, designed in the style of the 15th century by F.H. Crossley in 1913, includes rood figures from Oberammergau. The elaborate four-tiered oak font cover from 1924 stands on a 13th-century font that features pointed trefoil arcading divided by fleur-de-lys, which was brought from the Church of St Mary in Oxford. The church contains mid-19th-century glass in eight lancets by T. Willement, while two other windows, including the eastermost in the nave, feature figures created around 1887 by Morris and Co. The east window, dating from around 1900, was made by Louis Davis, and the central pair in the nave's north wall were crafted around the same time by Shrigley and Hunt of Lancaster. There is also a wall monument from around 1836 dedicated to Newman’s mother, featuring shallow relief work by R. Westmacott Jnr. The church is listed as Grade II* due to its historical association with J.H. Newman.