Church Of St Mark

The Church of St Mark is a parish church completed around 1920, designed by J Oldrid Scott. The church comprises a nave with aisles, a south porch, a chancel with a south chapel and vestry, and an organ chamber to the north. Original plans included a tall western tower, which was never constructed. The building is built of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and plain tile roofs. It features raised coped gables with kneelers and finials, a chamfered plinth, and bands of red sandstone.

The west front of the nave, completed around 1920, has a slightly projecting central porch with a pointed arch doorway and flanking buttresses. Above the doorway are two moulded bands and a circular window, with a blind triangular window in the gable. Large buttresses flank the west front, each gabled with octagonal ashlar tops featuring blind arcading and octagonal stone spires. The aisles are punctuated by two-light pointed arch windows with reticulated tracery, alternating with buttresses, and running under a deep parapet with blind tracery panels - five to the north and four to the south - as well as a projecting porch. This porch has diagonal buttresses and a deep parapet with checkerboard sides and a blind tracery gable, with a pointed arch opening flanked by small lancets and circular windows to the sides. The clerestory above the nave has five tall windows, each a three-light pointed arch window with reticulated tracery. The chancel’s east side features an elaborate five-light pointed arch window with reticulated tracery, with panels of checkerboard detailing in the gable, and two tall two-light pointed arch windows with simpler tracery to either side. The north side of the organ chamber features a single tall pointed arch window with checkerboard bonding. The south chapel and vestry have three three-light windows, one triangular-headed, one segmental-headed, and one pointed arched, all with checkerboard gables.

Inside, the nave arcades consist of five bays with moulded arches that die into the circular piers. A tall chancel arch leads to the chancel steps and a low ashlar screen wall. The church contains good-quality wooden roofs throughout, as well as a coloured marble pulpit, reredos, and War Memorial, and a carved stone octagonal font. Further interior features include 19th-century wooden choir stalls, screens, panelling, and an organ case.