A good interwar neo-Byzantine design, in which massing and detail are well handled.

The church was built to serve a congregation which hitherto had to travel to Standish or Weld Bank in Chorley. Construction was enabled by a legacy of £10,000 from W. Nicholas Jackson of Birkdale, and the foundation stone was laid by Canon Banks of Weld Bank in November 1926 (The Tablet, 13 November 1926).  The design has been separately attributed to Michael Honan and to Anthony Ellis. Honan was killed in the Great War, and it is possible that Ellis acted as executant architect, realising Honan’s earlier designs.

Description

Brick with stone dressings and banding, Westmorland slate roof. Byzantine style, with a lower west frontispiece incorporating a Crucifixus, sides with lunette windows and a semicircular apse flanked by chapels. A low group of vestries and confessionals is attached to the northeast side where there is a link to the presbytery.

The interior has a broad barrel roof probably of concrete construction, a west gallery with a bowed front and sides articulated by plain full-height pilasters. Tripartite east end articulated by pilasters with Ionic capitals. The sanctuary arch is flanked by lower arches to small domed chapels, a Lady Chapel, south and Sacred Heart Chapel, north. Alabaster reredos and altar, the latter brought forward. Plain bench seating, small stone font perhaps of nineteenth century date.  A scheme of stained glass probably of early or mid-nineteenth century date has medallions with  divines, historians, etc. This was brought from the presbytery of St Mary, Chorley and installed in the church in 1991.

Entry amended by AHP 8.1.2021

Heritage Details