Church of St Matthew and churchyard gateway

Church of St Matthew and churchyard gateway

Parish church built in 1875 by the architects Armfield and Bottomley. The church is broadly Early English in style, with detailing of early French character.

The building is constructed of local sandstone ashlar with a Welsh slate roof. The north face of the nave roof is bicoloured to form a geometric pattern.

The church plan comprises a chancel of two bays and a nave of four bays with a clerestory, flanked by side aisles. A west door provides the main entrance. The south aisle extends beyond the chancel arch to form an organ chamber. On the north side, the aisle has an enclosed porch extending northwards and connects to the vestry, which lies on the north side of the chancel. A short bellcote rises from the vestry at the junction with the north aisle.

Externally, the church is built of plain ashlar walling with a simple plinth and raised coping to the gables and other roof verges. The nave, chancel and porch gables are all topped by stone Celtic crosses. Windows are simple lancets with plain surrounds, except for a plate tracery rose window high in the west end. The porch and west doors have two-centred arched surrounds of three chamfered orders which fade into plain, single-chamfered jambs. The vestry is heavily buttressed, suggestive of a tower base, although the bellcote covers only about a quarter of this buttressed footprint. The bellcote consists of two short stages topped by a pyramidal slate roof with a Celtic cross finial. Its upper stage is largely open, being formed by corner posts which are lightly chamfered, supporting depressed-ogee lintels.

The chancel interior features exposed ashlar stonework with a boarded and ribbed wagon roof. The east window is a triple lancet with geometric stained glass windows reused from the earlier 1840 church, the lancets framed by nook shafts with foliate capitals forming an arcade. Similar arcades with lancet windows rise from a string course to the eastern bay along both north and south walls. An ornate stone reredos incorporates a mosaic crucifixion scene. The south wall contains an aumbry and a two-seat sedilia. The chancel's two bays are divided by a double-width rib springing from a large, complex corbel in the form of an entablature supported by a pair of shafts with foliate capitals, which in turn rise from a plinth supported by a corbel table. The western bay of the chancel has an arched opening through to the organ chamber on the south side (fitted with a pipe organ by Alfred Kirkland of London and Wakefield) and a smaller entrance to the vestry on the north side.

The nave and aisle walls, except at the east end and upper portion of the west end, are white plastered except for stone ashlar dressings. The nave roof appears as an over-boarded and ribbed hammer-beam roof with boarding across the lower braces having vaulted penetrations for the clerestory windows. The nave arcades are formed by two-centred arches of voussoirs with simple roll mouldings, supported on round piers with foliate capitals. Each pier has an attached small-diameter shaft extending to a plain block-capital supporting a lower arch-brace to the roof, almost forming a structure within a structure. Above each nave arch is a pair of clerestory windows separated by a similar small-diameter shaft extending from a string course below the windows. The aisle roofs are simply detailed, as are the aisle windows, which are deeply set in narrow reveals and only highlighted by the sill and plain unplastered voussoirs.

The clerestory and side windows to the chancel are plain glazed; the remainder are stained glass, generally forming memorials. Most are typical late 19th-century figurative designs including The Good Shepherd, though the east windows are of geometric design and one north aisle window is a modern abstract Calvary. The wheel window in the west end is possibly by Hardman.

The font is Romanesque with a simple incised design around the rim and is thought to be early Norman. It stands on a simple 19th-century pedestal and has a 19th-century oak lid. An elaborate carved Caen stone pulpit incorporates a statue of St Matthew. The altar dates to the late 1940s and was made by Robert "Mouseman" Thomson of Kilburn. Memorial plaques include separate First and Second World War memorials sited in the aisles.

The churchyard boundary wall is plain and not of special interest except for its main gateway, which has carved gate piers with cross-gabled caps supporting a pair of ornate wrought iron gates.