A now rare example of a once-common building type, a combined church and school. Originally designed by Edward Simpson but enlarged and mostly rebuilt at various stages in the second half of the twentieth century by the Langtry-Langton partnership.  

A combined school and chapel building designed by Edward Simpson, with the entrance  in  Bradford  Road, was opened in July 1879. A surviving plan in the diocesan archives shows a single room with six windows on each side and a three-light window at the west end. The present church may be on the same site but much of the fabric now clearly dates from the twentieth  century.  It seems that the church was substantially rebuilt in 1955, probably to the designs of J. H. Langtry-Langton and extended to the east by two bays in 1961. It is linked to the large late-nineteenth century presbytery, which may be by Simpson, by two new sacristies with a bedroom above. The sanctuary was reordered by Peter Langtry-Langton in March 1982.

The church hall was built in 1974 from designs by J. H. Langtry-Langton & Partners.

Description

The church is faced with coursed local stone, with roof coverings of Welsh slate. The body of the church is a single large rectangular space under a continuous pitched roof. The west gable end has two large three-light windows and a round window in the  gable. At the northwest corner of the building is a two-storey flat-roofed projection with the main entrance door up steps and a large three-light window. The entrance has a projecting canopy. Beyond the projection are five bays of three-light windows, then a small projecting porch then two further bays. The east end of the church is joined to the tall presbytery by a two-storey link building with modern timber windows of domestic character.

The interior space is a single volume with a braced collar roof over the first seven bays from the west end and a modern rafter roof without collars over the three eastern bays. Filling two bays at the west end is a timber gallery reached by a 1950s concrete stair in the northwest projection. The floor of the whole space is carpeted; the furnishings all date from the second half of the twentieth century.

Heritage Details