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Description: Church of St Thomas

Address: St Thomas's Church Church Street Heptonstall Hebden Bridge West Yorkshire

Grade: IISTAR

Group detail: Heptonstall

Full description:
Church, c1850-1854 by Mallinson and Healey. Set in the same church yard as the Church of St. Thomas a Becket which it replaced. Ashlar, slate roof. Tall west tower, nave, aisles, chancel and chancel chapels, north porch and south porch. Gothic Revival with Perpendicular traceried windows. 3-stage embattled tower. Angle buttresses. North door has pointed arched doorway with richly moulded surround and carved spandrels. West window set in 1st stage, square window with 4 quatrefoil lights in 2nd stage. Tall belfry windows of 3 over 3-lights to 3rd stage with elaborate hoodmould. Richly embattled parapet with tall pinnacles. 6-bay nave with 3-light windows to aisles and clerestorey, articulated by offset buttresses surmounted by gargoyles. Buttresses to clerestorey rise to form crocketed pinnacles. Richly embattled roofs with pinnacles and carved cross at division with chancel which has lower roof. 3-bay chancel with 2-bay chancel chapels. Diagonal buttresses rise to form pinnacles at east end with broad east window of 5 over 5 lights with cusped heads and plate tracery. 2-light windows in single bay return walls at basement level light small crypt chapel. Gabled porches with decorated diagonal buttresses and pinnacles has pointed arched doorway with richly moulded surround rising from the colonnettes. Hoodmould has carved faces to termination. Interior: Arcades with pointed arches rising from piers with clustered colonettes and moulded capitals. Queen post roof with spandrels filled with tracery. This rests on long posts with curved braces to tie beam, carved stone angles. Lean-to roofs to aisles. Arch braced roof to chancel. Most windows have stained glass. Re-ordered seating and furnishings in a modern cathedral style c1964 at the bequst of Abraham Gibson of Greenwood Lee (q.v.) by Robert Maquire and Keith Murray. In the 3rd bay of the nave a large new organ screen divides the church in two. Fine organ by Hill, Norman and Beard, 1964. The unusual 11 sided font from the old church is set behind the screen in preference to the 1850 font which is to one side of the altar. Some monuments from the old church are now housed in the tower which has the earlier church's clock made by Titus Bancroft of Sowerby Bridge in 1809. This has an 18' pendulum, dials 6' in diameter. The chief merit of the church lies in its landscape value. It is superbly sited and is visible on the skyline from every surrounding valley. N. Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding, (London 1979) p.262, 631. Illustrated in K. Parry, Trans-Pennine Heritage (1981) p.136.