Church Of St Anne

The Church of St Anne is an Anglican parish church built between 1856 and 1857 by S.B. Gabriel of Bristol for Captain J.N. Gladstone of Bowden Park. It is constructed from squared ironstone rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring stone slate roofs and coped gables. The church includes a nave, chancel, and north porch designed in the Early English style, alongside a Romanesque-style northeast tower topped with a gabled shingled pyramid roof.

The nave has three windows, flat buttresses, a heavy string course, moulded eaves, and 2-light plate-traceried windows. The north porch features a battered plinth that is flush on the west side, with a west wall displaying a 2-light window in the center, flanked by single lights and blank windows, creating a row of seven pointed arches, with the center arches being taller. The shafting between the arches is missing, and there is a gable vesica.

The chancel is adorned with a heavy corbel table and has three lancets on the south side, one on the north, and clasping flat buttresses. The east end features three pointed lights arranged in a 5-arch arcade, with a foiled circle in the gable. The three-stage northeast tower has clasping flat buttresses on the bottom stage, with ashlar coping between stages. The second stage includes recessed walling, a corbel table, and small arched lights on each side. The ornate gabled top stage has three stepped lights on each side, with missing shafting and Evangelist symbols as gargoyles at each corner, all topped with coped gables.

Inside, the church is lined with ashlar and features finely lettered inscriptions. The nave boasts a windbraced 6-bay roof, a moulded chancel arch with leaf capitals, and a stone pulpit and font. The chancel has a 3-bay roof with thin windbracing, an encaustic tile floor, and an alabaster reredos over a marble dado. The windows have Purbeck shafting and a moulded north arch leading to the vestry. The east window glass is signed by Warrington from 1857. There is a brass memorial on the north wall for Mrs Gladstone, who died in 1862, and two stained glass windows in the nave from around 1863 dedicated to Captain and Mrs Gladstone, along with a west window from 1887. Various brass plaques on the south wall honor the Merewether family of Bowden Hill House.