Parish Church of St. Peter

Location

Above the road and set in a small churchyard.

History

Built 1886-7 by J Oldrid Scott, architect of London, on the site of an earlier church by William Thomas (County Surveyor) built in 1832-4. The new church was consecrated on 18 October 1887; cost ca £5000. At this point plans for a west tower were finally abandoned.

Exterior

Decorated Gothic style. Nave, chancel and full height N and S aisles; vestry and SW porch. Local snecked rubble with yellow rubble banding and pink Runcorn freestone dressings; purple slate roofs with green slate patterned banding and tiled cresting. Gable parapets and stepped buttresses; plinth and cill band. E end has chequerboard patterned gabled and 5-light window. Set back to either side are 4-bay aisles; 4-light windows to S aisle and alternating 2 and 4-light windows to N. Priests door in chequerboard gabled vestry on S side with early Decorated 2-light window. Asymmetrically gabled south porch with 3 order arch and dying mouldings over rounded jambs. 2 order arched doorway with foliage stops to label; smaller similar doorway to S aisle. W end has Y-tracery derived windows and corbelled out bellcote with trefoil headed opening; S aisle also has chequerboarded gable.

Interior

Spacious interior with open timber roofs, rendered walls and tone arcades, 5-bay to N and 6-bay to S; octagonal piers with capitals, more elaborately moulded to N. Arched braced trusses to central nave with windbraces and stone springers; stop chamfered tie beams and octagonal king posts to N aisle roof.

Piscina and sedilia to chancel and panelled oak reredos with Flamboyant tracery carving to central triptych containing mosaic pictures. Gothic panelled pulpit and elaborate circular font dated 1889 at W end; plain octagonal font to N aisle. Baptism of Christ picture by Harvey Thomas (1979).