Little Theatre

The Little Theatre, originally a parish church, was built between 1856 and 1857 to the designs of A. Salvin and later restored in the chancel by Fulford, Tait, and Harvey from 1890 to 1891. The building is constructed from snecked local grey limestone rubble with sandstone dressings and has slate roofs. It is primarily designed in the Early English style, featuring some Geometric Decorated details.

The church has a cruciform plan, which includes a nave, chancel, lean-to aisles, a crossing tower, and north and south transepts. The interior has been altered for its current use as a theatre, with a ticket office at the west end, aisles screened off, and the auditorium located in the nave.

On the exterior, the symmetrical west front features a buttressed nave with a three-light Geometric Decorated west window that has nook shafts. The west door is moulded and has a two-leaf boarded door with elaborate hinges, flanked by vessicas containing relief carvings of the evangelists' symbols. The aisles have set-back buttresses and two-light plate-traceried west windows. The buttressed aisles also have two-light windows with trefoil-headed lights below a roundel, and trefoil-headed one-light clerestory windows arranged in pairs. A shallow gabled porch is located on the north side towards the west, featuring a moulded doorway with nook shafts. The north transept has tall, traceried one-light windows with a roundel in the gable, and an octagonal turret on the east side of the transept topped with a pyramidal stone roof. The east face has a five-light window with trefoil-headed lights. The short crossing tower, which was unrestored after a collapse in 1856, has clasping pilasters, a pyramidal roof, and a five-light window on the east face.

Inside, the conversion has largely obscured the original ecclesiastical fittings, but it retains an arch-braced roof in the nave with finely carved corbel heads. There is an alabaster reredos by Hems and an Art Nouveau tiled sanctuary dado from 1891 by Powell & Sons, noted in Pevsner. The building also contains an important set of 19th-century stained glass windows, including works by Hardman, Kempe, Burlison and Grylls, and Clayton and Bell.