Archetectural description of St Mary's

 

The church was built in 1890-1 to a design by Pugin & Pugin. It is built in a Gothic style in red brick with slate roof. It has a bell tower tower, 5-bay nave with side aisles and apsidal chancel. The tower has reducing angle buttresses, geometrical windows at lower level, lancets flanking niches with statues at clerestorey level, lancets in pairs at nave roof level and large louvred lancets at bell stage. The roof is pyramidal with overhanging eaves and mid-slope equilateral windows. A porch entrance of ledged and battened door in stone dressed gothic headed gabled porch with kneelers, copings and cross finial. Geometrical windows to nave gable and chancel, perpendicular to aisles and quatrefoil to clerestorey all in stone frames. Half-brick-thick inter-window piers, stone sill band, moulded eaves cornices, gable coping, lead hips to chancel, crested tile ridge and cross finials. Interior: Octagonal stone columns support the aisle. arcades. The mainly gilded stone reredos has such gothic features as daggers, crockets and brattishing; also a baldacchino on marble shafts covering the tabernacle. Stone side altars flank the main altar and front the aisles, all separated from the nave by marble communion rail with religious motifs. Panelled ceilings throughout with arched chancel and nave trusses carried by carved stone corbels. Moulded plaster stations of the cross.