Christ Church

Christ Church is a parish church built in 1865 by William Bruce, an architect based in Whitehaven who was active from 1862 to 1866. Bruce also designed the nearby St Margaret's church at Wythop in 1865-66.

The church is constructed of snecked rock-faced stone with a graded-slate roof. Its plan consists of a wide nave with a narrower vestibule at the west end, a north-west tower, a south-west porch, a short lower chancel, and a north vestry.

The exterior is built in the simple Gothic style and proportions favoured in the early 19th century. The nave features buttresses and a corbel table, with five tall transomed two-light plate-tracery windows. The west window is stepped with five lights and illuminates the gallery. Below it is a west doorway with a cusped arch, flanked by lancet windows. The lean-to south porch has a segmental-headed south doorway and trefoil stair windows. The three-stage tower has angle buttresses, a plain parapet, and plain pyramidal pinnacles. Its north doorway is similar to the porch entrance, with lancet windows in the lower stages and small two-light belfry openings. The chancel has angle buttresses, a stepped five-light east window, and a two-light plate-tracery south window. The lean-to vestry is an integral part of the design, with paired lancets to the east window and a shoulder-headed north doorway.

The interior features two tiers of superimposed cast-iron posts supporting the nave gallery and four-way arched braces in the roof. The five-bay roof is plastered behind common rafters and above collar beams. The chancel arch is double-chamfered, and the chancel has a richer polygonal roof with moulded and painted cornice and ribs. Walls are plastered. The nave has raised floorboards and the sanctuary has decorative tiles. The vestibule incorporates gallery stairs with cast-iron balusters and a floor of diaperwork red and yellow tiles. Half-glazed doors under overlights with intersecting glazing bars lead from the vestibule to the nave.

The gallery frontal is decorated with shoulder-headed panels. The font is an octagonal stone bowl with carved decoration including Evangelist symbols, accompanied by a font cover with a figure of Simeon, added in 1935. Behind the font are metal plaques with texts that belong with the 1865 building. A wooden polygonal Gothic pulpit is a later addition. The panelled chancel dado incorporates a canopied timber reredos from around 1900, and the chancel retains its encaustic tiles. Stained glass windows from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include one signed by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, depicting Christ casting out spirits in the east window. The pews were removed in the early 21st century.

The churchyard wall is of rock-faced stone with railings and incorporates two west entrances with gabled caps to freestone piers.

The church is of particular historical interest because it retained the style and plan of early 19th-century Gothic churches, including a gallery and short chancel, which had long been unfashionable by the 1860s. Pevsner described it as an extraordinarily reactionary design, though its conservatism is of genuine interest. The church has retained its original external character, some original fittings, and is one of a minority of 19th-century churches that has kept its original nave galleries. The east window is of high quality.