A handsome and dramatically-sited Gothic Revival church by E. W. Pugin, with some good furnishings.

Mass was celebrated in Dewsbury from 1841, and services were later held in a school-chapel. The first resident priest was appointed in 1865 and the foundation stone of the present church, built from designs by Edward Welby Pugin, was laid in 1867. The building was opened in June 1871. A new high altar was introduced in 1884 and a Lady altar in 1930.

Description

See also list description, below. The church stands over a substructure which contains a parish hall and other rooms, and is consequently very tall. The southwestern baptistery was converted to a war memorial chapel in 1919 and now contains memorial inscriptions with the names of the fallen, as well as the plaster Madonna and Christ referred to in the list description. The east end was reordered 1984 and the triple blind arches in the lower part of the sanctuary apse date from that reordering. Also as part of this work the original pulpit was much reduced in size, and some of its woodwork reused to make ambos. The western organ gallery is presumably original to the building and the timber openwork screen beneath the wide gallery arch must also date from the later nineteenth century. The three stained glass windows in the apse are of the 1890s and look like the work of Hardman, Pugin’s favourite stained glass makers.

List description

II

Gothic Revival Roman Catholic church. 1871 by Edward Welby Pugin. Pitched-faced stone with ashlar dressings. Slate roof. A tall slender building on a steeply sloping site. 9-bay nave. 3-bay chancel with 3-bay porch to right. Bays are marked by slender buttresses. Paired lancets with cusped heads and 6-foil over, to nave and apse. Single lancets with simple tracery to chancel. On the very tall south side is lean-to aisle with lancets, and lancets to the clerestorey. To the left is a small projecting baptistery bay with an 8-foiled rose window.

Interior: Arcade to south of 6 bays. Very large square bases to the columns. Gallery to rear with elegant carved oak screen below. Chancel arch on small colonnette responds, at high level, with heavily foliated capital and corbel. In the baptistery is a well carved Madonna and Christ in plaster. 14 stations of the cross in the nave.

Amended by AHP 18.01.2021

Heritage Details