Church Of St Mary Entrance Steps And Attached Handrail

Church of St Mary, Entrance Steps and Attached Handrail

This church was built between 1894 and 1896 to designs by W.H. Brierley. It is constructed of hammered sandstone with sandstone ashlar quoins and dressings, with a stone slate roof.

The church plan comprises a five-bay nave with a south porch, a choir, a south organ chamber and vestry beneath a central tower, and a chancel. The building is raised on a high, slightly battered chamfered plinth.

The west end has two two-light Geometrical windows beneath pointed hoodmoulds, flanking a gabled buttress. The south porch features a pointed roll-moulded opening approached by steps with a wrought iron handrail and decorative wrought iron boot-scrapers at the bottom. A panelled door opens into the porch. The nave has two square-headed windows of three trefoil-headed lights on the east side of the porch. Similar windows appear on the north side of the nave, with two towards the west end separated by an offset buttress and one towards the eastern end.

The tower is squat and three-staged, with angle buttresses and a south-west vice. A lean-to vestry obscures the lowest stage to the south and features a panelled door in a shallow pointed-arched doorway. A square-headed window of three round-headed lights sits to the east of this door, with a similar window in the west return beside a small staircase window. On the north side of the tower's lowest stage is a round-headed window of three lights with stripped Perpendicular tracery and a rolled hoodmould. The second stage is pierced to north and south by rectangular chamfered lights. Single belfry openings face north and south, with two to the east and west; all are shallow pointed and contain recessed paired louvred lights with scalloped heads. Clock faces appear to north and south beneath a plain parapet with roll-moulded coping, stepped up at each corner. A weathervane of Pennant stone, dated 1896, sits on top.

The chancel has a single window similar to those at the west end on the south side only. The east window contains five cusped pointed lights recessed in a segment-arched opening. Window surrounds throughout are double-chamfered, and all openings are quoined. Gable ends are coped and roll-moulded, with a chancel gable cross. Several waterspouts project from the west face. A foundation stone set in the plinth records: "To the Glory of God and the Holy Memory of S. Mary this stone was laid on July 5 1894 by M.D.McEacharn Esq."

The interior features splayed, segment-arched nave window openings. A double-chamfered, round tower arch rises on half-octagonal responds with moulded capitals. The church preserves a Romanesque or 12th-century bowl font from a demolished church at Egton, with a timber cover of 1903 comprising volutes clustered around an octagonal column. An altar slab on the north side of the sanctuary is thought to survive from the 12th-century Hermitage Chapel of St Mary of Godesland, now demolished. A 17th-century half-octagonal pulpit is carved with flowers and foliage. The choir fittings are by Brierley, while other fittings, notably the linenfold-panelled altar and reredos, are by Robert Thompson of Kilburn. An original brass candelabrum hangs in the choir. The roof is boarded and barrelled, supported on timber ribs with braced collars and upper queen struts. The porch contains the grave slab of Elizabeth Sleightholme, died 1695.