The Church Of Our Lady And St Michael, Attached Steps, Walls, Gates And Gatepiers

The Church of Our Lady and St Michael, Workington

This Roman Catholic church with its attached approach steps, boundary walls, gates and gatepiers dates from 1876 and was designed by Edward Welby Pugin. It is built of coursed squared red St Bees sandstone with ashlar dressings, roofed with Westmoreland slate laid to diminishing courses with coped gables. The building displays Early English Gothic Revival style.

The church follows a transeptal plan with the main entrance at the south front. The layout comprises a nave with an attached baptistry to the west side, east and west aisles and transepts, a west transept porch, a chancel with east and west side chapels, and a vestry to the north-west corner. An organ gallery spans the nave.

The south front is dominated by a steep gable with a gabled bellcote above. A central double doorway has a deeply moulded pointed arched head rising from curved quoining, with the double doors set below a tympanum in a deeply recessed entry. A hood mould with finials forms part of a string course terminating at angle buttresses to the corners. Above the doorway stand two tall two-light lancets with sexafoil heads beneath hood moulds. Between these windows is a niche containing a statue of Our Lady Star of the Sea, surmounted by a statue of Christ on the Cross which dominates the gable apex. Lean-to aisle end walls to east and west contain two-light windows. The west aisle links to an octagonal baptistry, each facet featuring a lancet window and each angle having a shallow buttress.

The west elevation displays five pairs of clerestory lancets connected by a string course forming hoods to the arched heads. Below the lean-to aisle roof sit triple lancets to the centre three bays above a cill band. An offshut extension to the aisle at the north end attaches to the west transept gable. The west transept features a cross finial and a lancet in its gable apex, with a slender ashlar chimney expressed as a projecting breast in the gable walling below. A circular window incorporating five quatrefoil lights sits above three lancets and the pitched roof of the transept porch. The vestry has a flat-roofed section linking to the west aisle and a hipped-roofed section further north attached to the west side chapel.

The north elevation shows the west chapel with a lean-to roof and a three-light window to its north end wall. The chancel gable features a wide five-light window with Geometrical tracery and a hood mould with block finials set in an ashlar band. This band defines the width of the advanced central part of the gable masonry and widens at the base through side batters.

The east elevation contains a tall transomed lancet to the chancel side wall, then the side chapel with a three-light window with depressed arched head set within an arched recess. The east transept mirrors the west transept detail but without the porch and with three full-height lancets. A four-bay aisle features triple lancets on a cill band.

The interior contains a two-bay chancel with ribbed ceiling and a tall pointed chancel arch. Side walls feature two-bay arcades opening onto the side chapels. An elaborate pinnacled Caen stone reredos forms the reredos. The carved choir stalls with misericordes depicting details from Aesop's fables were created by Robert Thompson of Kilburn. Patterned encaustic floors cover the stepped surfaces within the chancel.

The nave arcade features deeply moulded arches carried on Goraghwood granite columns from Newry, County Down, with Darley Dale gritstone capitals from Derbyshire. An alabaster pulpit encircles the northernmost column of the west arcade. The roof is an open arched form with tie rods linking the principal rafters. A wide depressed arch now supports a twentieth-century glazed screen for the organ gallery.

The baptistry features painted floral and foliage decoration with stencilled work to walls and ceiling. Ribbed vaulting rises from the roof on attached columns between windows, with a stellar boss supporting pulley supports for raising the font cover. An octagonal font with an elaborate painted timber cover stands on a patterned marble floor.

Externally, attached low flanking walls define the stepped approach to the south front door. On the east side, a double gateway with railed gates is flanked by gateposts with ball and vase finials. These walls extend to square quoined gatepiers from which curved walls extend, enclosing a semi-circular approach to the entrance pathway. They then extend east and west along the frontage.

The building underwent minor twentieth-century alterations.