Rectory, Gateway, Garden Building And Boundary Railings

Rectory, Gateway, Garden Building and Boundary Railings

A rectory to a Roman Catholic church, probably dating to around 1860–61 and designed by Benjamin Bucknall. The complex also includes a gateway built in 1882, a late 19th-century garden building, and mid-19th-century boundary railings. The rectory has undergone some minor internal updating.

The rectory and garden building are constructed of buff-coloured brick under patterned slate roofs. The rectory features ashlar dressings and large ridge and gable-end stacks with diagonally-set chimney pots and stone coping to the gable ends. Windows have stone surrounds and iron casements with twisted iron stays. The gateway is built of stone rubble with freestone dressings, while the railings are cast iron.

The rectory has an L-shaped plan comprising a five-bay range with a central projecting porch bay and a gabled wing of two bays to the south-west end. Two late 19th- or early 20th-century lean-to additions are attached to the wing. The gateway stands to the north-east of the rectory; the garden building at the south-west corner of the grounds; and the railings form the south-east boundary to the site.

The two-storey rectory is in a late medieval or Tudor style. It sits on a brick and stone plinth with a string course over the ground floor. The projecting full-height porch has diagonal buttresses, a four-centred arched entrance with a chamfered, flat-arched surround, and a statue niche above containing the Madonna and Child. A two-light mullioned window sits on the first floor of the porch. To either side are pairs of two-light windows with cusped heads, and two first-floor gabled dormers of paired lights under drip moulds. The wing has a three-light mullioned window to its gabled end and dormer windows to the first floor on the north-east and south-west elevations. The south-west elevation features a four-light mullioned and transomed window, a late 20th-century inserted ground-floor window, and four small square modern lights on the first floor. The rear garden elevation has an irregular arrangement of mullioned and transomed windows of two, three and four lights with two-centred heads in flat-arched, moulded surrounds. An off-centre doorway with a stone surround and late 19th-century timber door opens onto the garden. Towards the right-hand end is a full-height canted bay with a window to each floor and a stone shield in the apex of the gable. A modern greenhouse stands against the rear wall of the wing on the site of a 19th-century glasshouse.

The gabled pedestrian gateway of 1882 was built by Canon John Mitchell, the founder and first rector of the church. It has a pointed-arched doorway with chamfered surround and a modern metal gate. The north-east elevation bears an inset weathered stone shield above the doorway, and on the opposite face is a stone plaque recording the erection of the gate by the Canon. Within the rear garden, built against a boundary wall, is a small Gothic-style garden building, probably erected in the late 19th century. It is constructed of brick under a patterned tiled gabled roof with crested ridge tiles. Its front elevation has a doorway flanked by windows with intersecting timber tracery and diagonal weatherboarding above. The side elevations each have a single fixed light with pointed head.

Internally, the porch contains fixed wooden benches and a chamfered Tudor-arched doorway with a mid-19th-century timber door with ornamental strap hinges. The principal ground-floor rooms are accessed from a corridor running the length of the building; this arrangement is replicated on the first floor. The rectory retains a good range of historic fittings, including a timber staircase, doors, architraves, door furniture and decorative stone and marble fire surrounds. In one upstairs room are fitted cupboards with glass doors featuring glazing bars and cusped heads. The roof timbers are chamfered with braced principals and a single row of purlins. The garden building was not inspected internally in 2016.

The rectory garden is bounded to the south-east by cast-iron railings with fleur-de-lys heads, supported by iron brackets to their south-east side and fixed to brick piers with moulded stone caps at either end. The ground slopes slightly to the east, where the railings are carried on a low brick wall with stone coping.