A traditionally planned, plain, passage-aisled brick church in stripped Romanesque style, opened at the start of the Second World War. It has a fine carved figure of the Sacred Heart on the west front.

The parish was founded in 1920. The first church was a temporary wooden hut but by the mid-1930s this had become unsafe. The new church, built beside the old one and designed by Sandy & Norris of Stafford, opened in 1940. In the 1960s the parish hall was built behind the church and, as a successful parish club, raised enough money to build the presbytery in 1969.

Description 

The church is built of light buff brick and consists of a stubby west tower, nave, low passage aisles and sanctuary plus sacristies and a small north chapel. The aisles are flat roofed but the nave and sanctuary are pitched, with concrete tiles. The windowless aisles are low, which allows for tall pairs of round-arched windows as a clerestory for the five-bay nave. The west end, facing the road, has a circular window and a carved stone figure of the Sacred Heart by Anthony Foster (1909-57, a pupil of Eric Gill).

The interior is characterised by the large plain arches at the west end and also to and within the sanctuary: the low openings under lintels to the aisles are also distinctive. The walls are plastered and mostly painted a light cream. The nave ceiling is flat, rising in shallow steps to the centre, quite Art Deco in character. There are no internal fittings or furnishings that require particular mention.

Heritage Details