A relatively modest example of the work of E. W. Pugin, with significant local historical associations.

Before St Joseph’s was built worship took place at St Gregory’s, Weld Bank (q.v.), three miles away. Land was given by Charles Joseph Stonor of Anderton Hall (demolished) for a church, school, presbytery and cemetery. The aisle was used as a school until the construction of a separate school in 1872. The church retained a link with Stonor and Anderton Hall, which was used for worship between 1888 and 1890 when dry rot affected the church. The attached presbytery was burnt down in the mid-twentieth century and later replaced by sacristy, boiler room, etc., of poor architectural quality.

Description

Early English style with lancet and rose windows. Of local rock-faced stone and a slate roof. Nave and polygonal chancel, low north aisle of five bays. A small chapel and separate baptistery, south side, are twentieth-century additions in broadly matching style. West front with a shallow porch and large rose window. The late twentieth-century sacristy, offices, etc., are attached on the southeast side. They are of red brick, partially rendered.

The interior has a narthex with a late twentieth-century screen beneath a canted west gallery with the original painted altar panel relocated on the front. North aisle arcade with octagonal stone columns and plain caps. Cambered nave roof with trusses rising from plain corbels, ribbed chancel roof rising from similar corbels. To the south are two arched entrances to the sacristy, and the chapel of St Gerard (dedicated in 1909). The panelled sanctuary has a large gilded timber reredos with a statue of Christ below a domed timber canopy; the panelling and reredos were added in 1906. A large rood hangs at the junction of the nave and sanctuary; this was originally on the north wall. The church was reordered by the Pozzoni Design Group in 1995; a new forward altar was made from the parts of the original altar and placed on a raised sanctuary.The reredos and tabernacle remain in situ. Altar rails were removed (these were possibly recent additions), and the narthex screened, but the seating appears to remain unchanged. A baptistery was added in the 1960s by Anderton & Kellie. It contains two stained glass windows and a font of Italian marble, and is now used as a repository. Northeast altar with an unusual nineteenth-century painting of the Betrothal in the style of Raphael. Stained glass includes a window by Shrigley & Hunt, c.1950s, and one in memory of Fr Roskell, dated 1976.

Heritage Details