Church of St Ann

The Church of St Ann is a Tudor Gothic style building, largely dating from the 19th century, with earlier fabric. It consists of a nave with a porch, a south tower, and a lower, narrower geometrical style chancel. The church is constructed of rock-faced stone with snecked details, and has tile roofs.

The three-bay nave has four-light windows, and a gabled porch is set back from the west end on the south side. The porch has a pointed doorway with a hood mould featuring foliage stops, and a cusped window above it, also with a hood. A string course runs around the side walls above plain, square-headed windows. The west window is three-light Perpendicular in style. The three-stage south tower is set against the chancel, with the upper stage narrower than the lower. The lower stage has diagonal buttresses, a cusped window on the south wall, a two-light Tudor window to the west, and a pointed doorway with a boarded door on the east wall, offset from the chancel angle. Above the doorway is a tablet recording the restoration of the old chapel in 1687 and the building of the new chapel in 1887. The middle stage has cusped windows to east and west, and a small stair light to the left on the south wall. The upper stage has two-light belfry windows and a plain parapet.

The chancel has two-light north and south windows, and a three-light east window. A north projection, housing the organ, has a two-light Tudor east window, with a lean-to vestry against the gable end.

Inside the porch, a two-centred arch once led to the nave (the door is now removed). The nave has a collar-beam roof, strengthened by sinuous diagonal struts rising from moulded corbels. A wide chancel arch, reminiscent of the early 13th century, has rounded responds, foliate capitals and a segmental-pointed arch with two orders of chamfer. Segmental arches also led to the tower on the south side (now the vestry) and organ recess on the north. The chancel has a boarded polygonal ceiling with thin ribs. The piscina has a projecting, fluted bowl, a cusped arch, and a hood with foliage stops.

The octagonal font has a moulded base, a tall stem, and a small bowl. The octagonal stone pulpit has panels with blind cusped arches and stands on a thin pedestal. Above the chancel arch is a mosaic figure of Christ. The east window contains unsigned stained glass depicting the Virgin and Child flanked by St Ann and St Elizabeth.

To the right of the chancel arch is a memorial tablet to G T Clark (1809-98), consisting of an inscription on encaustic tiles, with a mosaic border and a marble frame, above which is a tablet with a lion rampant in relief. To the left of the chancel arch are two similar tablets to Clark’s son, Godfrey Lewis Clark (died 1918), and his wife, Alice (died 1915).