Christ Church

A large mid-Victorian church built in the simple Lancet style. The building follows a conventional plan with a 4-bay aisled nave, a 3-bay gabled chancel, and a western tower crowned with a tall broach spire. It is constructed of local rough-dressed, uncoursed limestone with buff sandstone dressings, beneath a slate roof with tiled ridges and iron gable crosses.

The north side features a single-storey porch with a coped gable and 2-part diagonal buttresses. The porch entrance has a pointed compound arch with a splayed slit light above and paired slit lights to the sides. Inside, a decorative tiled pavement leads to a pointed-arched inner entrance with simple boarded doors decorated with ironwork. The aisles contain plate tracery windows, each with paired lancets beneath an oculus; a similar window appears to the east on the north side only, with paired lancets lighting the west walls of both aisles. Small squat lancets illuminate the upper nave on both sides.

The chancel sits on a chamfered plinth and features a tall triple lancet group to its east end with returned labels and uncarved stops. Three tall lancets light the north side and one the south, all with continuous label moulds. A lean-to vestry block extends from the south side in the angle between the aisle and chancel, with a lateral chimney rising above the chancel roof and steps descending to a boiler entrance with a boarded door.

The square western tower rises in 3 stages below the spire. Two-stage clasping buttresses flank the south-west corner up to the second stage, while a semi-octagonal stair turret is applied to the north-west up to the third stage, bearing a benchmark on the battered plinth of its north face. The tower's north entrance has a broach-stopped, shouldered-arched opening with a boarded door. Slit lights pierce the second stage on both north and south elevations. The west elevation displays a 2-light plate tracery window to the first stage and an oculus with trefoil tracery to the second. The bell stage carries 3 louvred lancets to each face. The spire features small lancets within gablets to each face in its lower section.

The interior reveals a 4-bay pointed-arched arcade supporting the nave on columns with cushion capitals. Lancets in the clerestorey have wide pointed-arched inner splays. The roof employs scissor trusses with angled braces descending onto stone corbels below wall-plate level, with thin windbraces arranged in two tiers. Original pitch-pine box pews remain. The south entrance is a shallow inner porch of pitch pine in simple Gothic style, appearing to be a later 19th-century addition. The aisles have similar mono-pitch roofs and wide trefoil-headed window splays. Geometrical tiled pavements, obscured by carpeting at the time of survey in 2001, cover the floor.

An early English style sandstone font, early in date, features a chamfered rim to its square bowl and sits upon a large central column with four slender outer columns, all with shaft rings and water-catching bases. A fine polychrome tiled pavement in a square surrounds the font. An octagonal sandstone pulpit of conventional form bears relief-carved Evangelist figures to each face.

The large chancel arch displays outer and inner pointed and roll-moulded arches supported on engaged shafts and columns with waterleaf capitals, shaft rings and water-catching bases. Above it is affixed a contemporary painted inscription band on metal. The chancel steps up and features low oak dado screens flanking a central opening with decorative iron gates. Each screen section carries 3 cusped oculi with moulded rails, surmounted by decorative iron railings with scrollwork and finials; the gates are similarly designed. A 3-bay roof with elegant braced collar trusses covers the chancel. Fine 13th-century-style polychromed tiles line the chancel and sanctuary. The sanctuary has scrolled decorative iron altar rails with a moulded oak rail. 20th-century oak choir stalls, a reredos and dado panelling complete the chancel furnishings. The early English east window group features inner shafts with moulded rings, capitals and bases. A late 19th-century Gothic pine organ by Cronacher and Co. of Huddersfield occupies the chancel.

An original pine Gothic screen closes the lower west tower (to the former vestry), with a large modern window of intersecting tracery above lighting the nave with plain glazing. A modern screened robing enclosure stands before the west tower at the western end of the nave.

The church contains notable stained and painted glass. The east window displays mid-19th-century glass in 13th-century style with foliated quatrefoils and roundels. In the north aisle, the easternmost window shows Christ and the Two Marys; to the right of the entrance is Christ and the Children, a 1922 memorial to E. Jones. Two similar windows in the south aisle depict the Three Marys at the Sepulchre (memorial to C.B. Williams, died 1920) and Christ appearing to the disciples (memorial to E. Lewis, died 1919).