Church of St Mary and St Wilfred is a Grade II* listed building in the Cumberland local planning authority area, England. First listed on 1 April 1957. Church.

Church of St Mary and St Wilfred

WRENN ID
patient-forge-merlin
Grade
II*
Local Planning Authority
Cumberland
Constituency
Carlisle MP: Ms Julie Minns (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
1 April 1957
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Mary and St Wilfred, A69, Wetheral
OS grid reference
NY 475 568
Coordinates
54.90331, -2.81994
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of St Mary and St Wilfred is a Roman Catholic church built in 1841 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin for Henry Howard of Corby Castle. It features red sandstone snecked ashlar walls and a slate roof with coped gables. The church has a nave consisting of four bays and a single bay chancel, along with a gabled south porch and an added sacristy on the south wall of the chancel. The nave's walls are buttressed and display alternating large and small lancet windows, with the larger windows featuring Y-shaped tracery and cusped heads. The west entrance and porch have pointed arches with moulded surrounds and hood moulds that end in mitred heads. The west gable is adorned with three lancets that have trefoil heads and hood moulds, topped by a hexagonal bellcote.

Inside, the church boasts an open timber roof that is painted and decorated with gold. There is a stone font near the south entrance and a cut-stone pulpit on the south wall of the nave, adjacent to the chancel arch. The pulpit has an entrance from the sacristy and is decorated with figurative painted panels. A corresponding niche on the north wall contains a figure of the Virgin Mary. Text is painted around the dado panels, and decorative motifs are painted on the splays of the smaller lancets. The stained glass windows, created by Harrington of London in 1860, 1865, and 1867, were presented by Philip Howard.

The chancel features a screen made of carved and painted wood, which includes a central crucifix flanked by figures of the Virgin Mary and St Wilfred. The ceiling is a decorative painted ribbed plank design, and the walls are also painted. The altar is stepped and heavily gilded, with metalwork designed by Pugin, and it is flanked by two small coronas also by Pugin. There are sedilia and a piscina in the south wall, and a recess resembling an Easter Sepulchre in the north wall contains the tomb of Henry Howard, who died in 1842. The church retains all of its original decorations, many of which are in line with Pugin's designs.

Local climate

Church of St Mary and St Wilfred sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,090 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 87% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 79% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 54 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 95% of listed buildings. Of these, 29 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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