Church of St Peter

Church of St Peter

This is a Grade II* listed building, a complex and carefully-handled High Victorian church of coursed rubble stone with sandstone dressings. The stone has been rendered over on the south, west and east walls. The roof is slate with crested ridge tiles.

The church displays a sophisticated architectural composition that employs solid geometry to build up pitched roofs from the lowest vestry to the crowning tower pyramid. The building comprises a nave and chancel with crossing tower, a shallow south transept, a large north porch, and a north transeptal stair-tower linked to a north-east vestry. The nave has the tallest roof, followed by a slightly lower south transept roof, then a lower chancel, and finally a north stair tower with a hipped roof that slips below the tower sill course. This careful gradation continues from the hipped stair-tower roof down to the hipped porch roof on the far right.

Particularly notable is the north-east sequence, where the hipped stair-tower features a very tall wall-face chimney corbelled out from an otherwise flush wall. The wall runs east with roofs graded down from hip to lean-to (over the tower door) to a lower lean-to over the vestry. This last element returns the movement upward by being continuous with the chancel roof. The tower is rectangular rather than square, with corbelled eaves and a slate pyramid roof. Small shouldered-headed bell-lights sit below a sill-course.

The exterior features ashlar flush windows and sandstone quoins and corbels throughout. The nave's west wall has two cusped lancets and a quatrefoil, with sills linked over a mid-buttress. The north-west porch has corbelled eaves and a hipped roof, with a double-chamfered arch with impost string course and side buttressing. A string course runs on the porch east and nave north beneath a single 2-light window and a pair of 2-light windows, with one buttress. The south side is similar, with paired 2-lights each having a quatrefoil above. The south transept has a high 2-light with quatrefoil and a hoodmould. The chancel is windowless on the south, with a stepped east triplet and two buttresses below the sill course. The north vestry has a sill course, an east rectangular light, and a north small traceried ashlar roundel. The stair tower has a shouldered north door with a triangular hood and a small single light under a first floor corbelled stack, with a small stair light to the left.

Interior

The interior has plastered walls and scissor-rafter roofs. Broad chamfered west and east tower arches die into the walls. The south transept has a higher arch that cleverly lights the crossing. The chancel features a south pointed and cusped sedilia recess with a small trefoiled shelf recess to the left, and a north side vestry door.

The furnishings represent an exemplary range of Butterfield's very simple but innovative Gothic woodwork. These include open-back pews, a canted-fronted pulpit with pierced panels, stalls with cusped pierced frontals, a similar priest's stall, cusped pierced sanctuary rails, a panelled pierced altar, and a small bench in the sedilia recess.

The font is exceptionally fine: a massive grey marble square bowl of subtle tapered form, set on an ashlar pier with red marble inset angle shafts and a black marble square base, raised on an ashlar step.

The chancel floors are graded and stepped, with increasingly rich use of coloured and encaustic tiles subtly set in stone borders. Encaustic tiles are inset in an ashlar reredos which has a stepped top and simple but careful tile patterning, with a cross set on plain stone at the centrepiece and more heavily tile-inlaid sides.

The east window, dedicated to the sisters of the Reverend Gilbertson, is an exceptional work by Alexander Gibbs, depicting a Crucified Christ flanked by soldiers over three small story panels. It exhibits strong Gothic drawing style with clear lines and bold colours.

A chancel north consecration memorial is dated 1868.

The north door leads to a passage with a boiler-house cum stair-tower to the left and a vestry to the right. An iron ladder provides access to the bell-stage, which contains 4 bells. A weathercock is stored in the boiler-house.