St Catherine's Church

St Catherine's Church is a tall aisled hall church built in an austere early Gothic style on a sloping site. It features bull-nosed snecked masonry with ashlar dressings, including irregular stressed quoins, continuous sill and impost bands, plain corbels, and a plinth. The steep slate roofs are canted over the aisles, and there are raking gable parapets with cross finials. A tall slate-hung fleche with a timber louvred band on the ridge is the only external differentiation between the nave and chancel.

The south aisle has seven bays and stops short of the east end. To the left, there is a gabled and buttressed porch with a moulded pointed arched entrance featuring iron gates, and a niche in the gable apex above. The inner doorway has ovolo moulding. A similar shallow porch is located at the right end of the aisle. Between these porches are five lancet windows with hoodmoulds, impost, and sill bands, along with single lancets at the west and east ends of the aisle. The north aisle has similar details and features eight bays, with taller lancets at the gabled vestry at the east end. There are twin circular flues to the chimney.

At the west end of the nave, there is a stepped four-light lancet window with a sill band clasped between stepped buttresses, surmounted by a lancet vent at the apex, along with an impost and sill band. The east end has tripartite stepped lancets with two-light mullioned windows incorporated under a low transom, and a lancet vent at the apex. There are also two tall lancets on the south wall of the chancel.

The interior is lofty, featuring a seven-bay timber arcade with angle-braced posts on high stone bases. A second tier of similar arcading in the blind clerestory houses an extremely rare ventilation system with arched wooden shutters operated by a rope and pulley system, with rendered panels between the shutters. The boarded wagon roof has a trefoiled profile with King strut tie beams in the upper tier.

Contemporary fittings include a fine pulpit made of banded granite, a low stone chancel screen with an iron traceried rail, and a traceried reredos with panels divided by tall finials. The bench pews are also contemporary. There is a stained glass window in the south aisle by Celtic Studios from 1970, and the east window was created by Heaton, Butler and Baine in 1911.