Roman Catholic Church Of St Richard

The Roman Catholic Church of St Richard was built in 1865, designed by C.A. Buckler and endowed by the Countess of Newburgh. It is constructed of stone rubble with ashlar dressing and a slate roof, and comprises a four-bay nave, a lower two-bay chancel, a south aisle, and a north porch. The church is executed in the Gothic style, featuring traceried windows with leaded lights and buttresses.

The west front, oriented to face the rising sun for liturgical reasons, has a cross-shaped saddlestone and a large arched west window with five trefoil-headed lancets above three circular openings. A smaller window is located south of this, also with trefoil-headed lights and a trefoil above. An arched west door is marked by recessed colonnettes. The south side features paired lancets with trefoil heads and quatrefoils above. The north side has windows with three trefoil-headed lancets and two circular lights. The gabled north porch has a trefoil-headed arch with a sexfoil stone plaque above, bearing the shield and mitre of St Richard of Chichester. The east front is defined by an arched window with three trefoil-headed lancets, and above it, a central circular window flanked by trefoils.

Inside, the nave roof has purlins and arched braces supported on stone corbels. Original fittings by Buckler remain, including a carved stone altar within the chancel with marble colonnettes, and a carved stone altar in the Lady Chapel incorporating a statue of the Virgin and Child beneath a trefoil-headed canopy. An octagonal stone font has marble shafts to its columns, and a stone pulpit features trefoil-headed cutouts. The original pews survive. The west window contains stained glass by Hardman, dated 1865, depicting the Virgin and Child centrally, with St Richard and St Anthony of Padua on either side. A particularly fine marble Neo-Classical wall monument, signed by Bertel Thorwaldsen and commemorating Anthony Earl of Newburgh (died 1814), depicts a kneeling woman and a grieving angel either side of a central column; it is one of only three monuments by Thorwaldsen in England.