Christ Church

Christ Church is a church built of local light-grey rock-faced limestone, sited on elevated ground to the east of Prestatyn High Street. It is entered at the north side beneath a heavily buttressed broach-spired tower which dominates the composition. The different architects involved employed different Gothic styles throughout the building.

The roof is of slate in graded courses with tile ridges and coped gables, except for the west gable of the Lady Chapel. Door, window and other dressings are of yellowish freestone. The earliest masonry is distinguished by the use of a mortar with coarse black grit.

The earlier part of the church features an Early English west elevation with paired lancets and roundels above, a small rose window with dog-toothed ornament, and a central west buttress. A similar but smaller pair of lancets with roundel exists on the north side, west of the tower. The north aisle windows are paired lancets, completed in similar Early English style. The south aisle, by contrast, has triple Tudor flat-headed windows and a Tudor west door.

The later part of the church is designed in a free version of Perpendicular Gothic. The east window has five cusped lights under a four-centred arch with a thin label mould. The chancel south window and the high transept window have three lights with tracery and simpler label moulds. Other windows are square-headed. The north transept door is coupled to single lights at its sides under a common label mould. The Lady Chapel east window is in Early English style and was relocated from the first phase of construction.

The octagonal spire is another Early English composition, with its arrises, base course, three bands and a small clock gable to the north picked out in freestone. The three belfry openings are paired trefoil-headed lights with quatrefoils above in plate tracery. Generous tower buttresses with offsets, a stair turret to the north-west, an arched main entrance to the north, and paired windows to the west are features of the tower. Single lights are positioned above to the west and north. Five string courses run across the tower.

The nave is six bays long with arch-braced collar-beam trusses incorporating wall posts which start some distance below the wallplate level, with mock ashlaring. The nave and chancel are notably broad and light, with an unusually high and wide chancel arch. The aisle arcades have equilateral pointed arches in two orders, chamfered, on hexagonal columns and one round column from the original north aisle (supporting the two slightly lower arches of the first construction phase under Wyatt). The aisle roofs are lean-to with a single purlin. The nave and aisle floors are part quarry tiles, part wood blocks. Open pews, the majority original, are present, with those at the east added after construction of the later chancel.

The pulpit is octagonal in Gothic style and was the gift of the Welsh congregation in 1925. Three steps lead up to the chancel.

The chancel has a broad pointed and four-centred barrel ceiling with a side vault over the organ, featuring thin ribs and gilded bosses. The floor is of black and white tiles. The Gothic-style altar has open miniature tracery. A three-panel reredos with the centre panel framing the altar cross is present, with lower panelling each side (donated 1951) and curtains. Communion rails and choir pews are in simple Gothic style.

The vestry is positioned to the north and has a wood-block floor and flat boarded ceiling. Two commemorative stones record the building work of 1905 and 1927. The Lady Chapel, to the south of the chancel, is one step above the nave and aisle floor and is entered under a slightly pointed segmental arch. It has a pointed barrel ceiling, wood-block floor, and a brass communion rail.

The east window depicts the Ascension and commemorates the completion of the church. The Lady Chapel east window is in three lights with the Good Shepherd in the centre light; this window depicts the original glazing of the first east window and is a memorial to six choirboys drowned in 1868, whose graves are adjacent to the south of the church. The south window by G H Lees (1900) depicts the Little Children. Other stained glass windows date from the mid-20th century. Boards to the left of the porch door list vicars and churchwardens from 1861, and a brass plate to the right lists the names of those who fell in the 1914-18 war.

The organ was built by Abbot and Smith of Leeds and installed in 1907. It now stands to the north of the chancel, its position having been altered and improved. The font is square with sunk panels on each face and a five-column support.