Christ Church

Christ Church

Church built in 1841 to the design of C Dyer. The steeple was added in 1859 by J Norton, and the aisles were extended in 1885 by WC Basset-Smith. The building is constructed in limestone ashlar on a Pennant ashlar plinth with a slate roof and leaded porches. It follows an Early English Gothic Revival style and is planned as an aisled, cruciform church with an apse, a south-east vestry, and a south-west steeple.

The apse is octagonal with paired lancet windows set within a panel between a sill mould. Shallow pilasters rise from the angles beneath a trefoil arcade that runs below the parapet. The vestry has a canted bayed end with a roll-topped parapet, small lancets to each face, and a group of three lancets on the south side beside a small doorway with a shouldered arch. The aisle ends feature pairs of lancets, with a large broached pinnacle on the angle where each aisle meets the nave gable, decorated with thin gableted trefoil arches on shafts and a pyramidal top.

The north transept is flanked by octagonal buttress towers with blind gabled lancets on all four sides and spirelet tops with gableted openings. The gabled porch has an arched doorway with a trefoil and hood moulding, flanked by three lancets with shafts and moulded capitals (two on the right, one on the left). Above a drip mould is an arcade of five tall lancets with banded shafts, topped by a twelve-spoke wheel window beneath the parapet with a finial.

The north aisle extends for four bays, each featuring an arcade of paired lancet windows with narrower blind ones on either side, set on banded shafts and separated by weathered buttresses rising through a roll-topped parapet. The porch at the west end has a shouldered gable with blind lancets flanking the doorway, which displays stepped pointed panels in the tympanum and a blind lancet flanked by trefoils above. A clerestory runs along four bays of the nave and returns for one bay of the transept, each bay containing an arcade of five lancets (the side and central ones blind) separated by very shallow buttresses.

The south transept differs from the north in having an arcade of five stepped lancets with a final blind pair at the ends of the gable. The tall west porch has an arched doorway of two orders, a trefoil panel above, and side pinnacles with four slender shafts. Inside, a cinquefoil-arched doorway features a continuous hood of undercut roll moulding. Along the outsides runs a blind arcade of five trefoil-headed arches, which continues as a further arcade of five lancets across the front. The west end is lit by three tall stepped lancets separated by blind lancet panels of uniform height on banded shafts, with above a stepped arcade matching the south transept.

The five-stage tower and broach spire, constructed in 1859, features set-back buttresses with graded weatherings and a weathered plinth. The west doorway has a depressed trefoil arch within a splayed opening of three orders, with two sub-orders containing Purbeck marble shafts, and a two-leaf door with scrolled strap hinges. The middle three stages contain blind arcades—the lower stage with undercut trefoil heads, the second with a single narrow light, and the third with two such windows. The tall belfry stage has three louvred lancets of three orders on banded shafts separated by a dogtooth moulding, set below an arcaded top. The tower corners are chamfered into the battered plinths of spire pinnacles, which match those on the west porch. Between them are tall gabled two-light lucarnes serving the ribbed octagonal spire, crowned with a ball finial.

Interior

The sides of the apse contain arcades of three trefoil-arched niches, with banded shafts extending up the corners to a ribbed vault. A tall chancel arch of three attached shafts is flanked by narrower arches with transoms and open tracery tops. The crossing arches have five attached shafts (including two in Purbeck marble) with pierced quatrefoils on either side at the top. A four-bay nave arcade features cluster columns with four shafts and slim Purbeck shafts between them. The arch-braced roof is carried down below the clerestory sill band by triple attached shafts to corbels, while the aisle roofs are similarly supported.