Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary

This is a small cruciform church built in the simple plate-tracery Gothic style. The walls are constructed of rough-dressed limestone blocks, with the choir snecked and featuring a chamfered plinth; limestone dressings are used throughout. The steeply pitched slate roof has slab-coped gable parapets, simple coved eaves with corbelling to the polygonal apse.

The nave contains two two-light pointed-arched plate tracery windows on the south side and three similar windows on the north side. Each has punched trefoils within oculi above cusped lights, with stopped labels decorated with alternating naturalistic foliate carvings and head stops. A single-storey porch on the south side features a pointed-arched entrance with triple arch and semi-octagonal engaged columns; the columns have moulded abaci and bases. The outer entrance has a returned hood-mould with carved head stops, and a vent oculus to the gable apex with splayed cross tracery.

Shallow gabled transepts project to the south and north, each containing a triangular tracery window with three quatrefoils. On the north side below the window are two basement entrances providing access to boiler rooms. To the right of the transept stands a small, squat chimney with its stack removed. The polygonal apse at the east end has stepped buttresses and tall lancets to each face.

The interior is restrained and essentially unaltered. The tall nave features a 4-bay arched-braced collar truss roof, with trusses carried on moulded stone corbels. Bracing above the collar forms a pointed arch and a trefoil at each apex. Original simply-decorated pine pews line the nave, and the central pavement is of red tiles with edging and insets in black and yellow.

The font is a remarkable life-sized white marble sculpture of a winged angel kneeling and holding a scallop, created by Theobald Stein and signed and dated 1864, based on the original by his master Thorwaldsen. An Early-English-style sandstone pulpit of square plan and two stages stands in the nave, decorated with a stiff-leafed carved frieze and grey figured marble columns at the corners.

The shallow north transept contains a small vestry with a cluster-truss roof and double-moulded pointed-arched entrance. This space is screened from the nave by a four-part boarded and panelled screen partition with simple blind tracery arcade and stopped-chamfered stiles and rails, with the entrance at bay 3. The corresponding south transept houses an organ of 1902 by Peter Conacher and Co of Huddersfield, a commemorative gift from Sir Herbert Watkin Williams-Wynn, with polychromed pipes.

The polygonal apse is raised and approached via three steps. A large chancel arch features a hollow-chamfered broach-stopped outer arch and a chamfered inner arch supported halfway up by fine stiff-leafed carved capitals resting on engaged shafts mounted on stiff-leafed corbels. The apse floor is of polychromed tiles with simple brass altar rails on decorative scrolled and twisted supports. The apse vault features a central carved foliated boss with ribs carried on engaged corner shafts with capitals matching those of the chancel arch.

The sanctuary is further stepped up and contains a complex patterned and polychromed tiled floor, with similar treatment to the dado walls flanking a tripartite reredos. The reredos is of fine cosmati-work in five types of coloured marble inlay, with a central tondo of white marble showing a Pieta in high sculpted relief. Christ's inlaid monograms flank the central figure, and an inlaid marble cross surmounts the composition.

The apse and west windows contain contemporary figurative stained glass in 13th-century style by Lavers and Barraud. The easternmost southern nave window is a commemorative figurative window by Lavers, Barraud and Westlake, dated 1876.