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Description: Christ Church

Address: Christ Church Wharf Street Sowerby Bridge West Yorkshire

Grade: II

Group detail: Wharf Street (north side)

Full description:
Church. 1819 by John Oates, chancel rebuilt. 1873-4, re-roofed 1894. Ashlar, roof not visible. West tower with north and south additions, galleried nave, chancel with north organ chamber. Perpendicular style. Tower: 3 stages; off-set diagonal buttresses. West face flat-headed 3-light window with 2-light window above to 1st stage; single-light window to 2nd stage; clock in base of 3-light window to 3rd stage; windows pointed-arched under hoodmoulds, some with head-stops. Slit vents to right on all stages. Embattled parapet with pinnacles. North and south faces above the 2-storey additions are as west face, southern addition embattled with pointed-arch doorway and cusped tracery to windows. Nave: 6 tall bays. Plinth. Offset buttresses with pinnacles. On left, steps up to pointed-arch door in roll-moulded doorway, the surround breaking forward with shields in spandrels and flanked by pinnacled columns; 3-light window above. This and other windows pointed-arch, of 3 lights, transomed, and under hoodmoulds with grotesque headstops. Chancel: 2 bays, narrower. Chamfered plinths, offset buttresses. On left, steps down to basement doorway. Windows as nave but of 2 cusped lights. Embattled parapet; right buttress rising into thick crocketed pinnacles; gable cross. 3 plain pointed-arch windows to east front; north front (chancel) plainer. Interior: horseshoe gallery with panelled front supported by cast-iron quatrefoil-section columns. Tall, blind, pointed tower arch with basket-arched ground-floor opening and pointed-arched gallery opening. Hammer-beam nave roof of 1894 with cusped-headed sections, the trusses supported on columns as for gallery which rise from octagonal shafts. Plain pointed arch to chancel which has tessellated floor and elaborate Gothic style stone reredos and wooden chancel screen (1935). Polychromatic marble war memorial (1921). Pitch pine pews with book drawers. Octagonal font of 1895 has panels decorated and with apostles' symbols and supported by central shaft with outer colonnettes on square base. Small table dated 1520 with turned legs from Brig Chapel, which this church replaced. Rev J W Winder, The Storey of Sowerby Bridge Church (1945). Kelly's Directory, 1897.