St Mary's Church is in St Mary's Street, Preston,

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

, England. It is a redundant Anglican

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

, and was converted into a conservation centre in 2006. The church is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

as a designated Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

St Mary's was built to accommodate the increasing population of the town in the early 19th century. Building began in May 1836 and the church opened in 1838. The church was designed by John Latham, and was extended in a matching style with the addition of

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

s and a

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

in 1852–56 by E. H. Shellard. The church was declared redundant by the

diocese of Blackburn The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created on 12 November 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool and Burnley, the cities of Lancas ...

on 1 March 1996, and was converted into a conservation centre for the Museum of Lancashire in 2006.

Architecture

The church is constructed in

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

and has a slate roof. It is orientated in a north–south axis and is in

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

style. The plan consists of a five- bay

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, east and west transepts, and a chancel. All the windows are round-headed. At the south end of the church is a tower flanked by wings. The tower is in four stages, the bottom stage being in three storeys. The lowest of these storeys contains a round-headed doorway with three orders of moulding. Both of the upper storeys contain a three-light window. Each of the three upper stages is set back, with two-light bell openings in the second and third stages. The top stage consists of a drum with corner cylinders, on which is a needle spire with

lucarne In general architecture a lucarne is a term used to describe a dormer window. The original term french: lucarne refers to a dormer window, usually set into the middle of a roof although it can also apply to a façade lucarne, where the gable of t ...

s. The wings flanking the tower are of a similar height to its first stage. Both have round-headed doorways with a window above, and clasping

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s, the outer one surmounted by squat pinnacles. The east and west sides of the wings are

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

d. Along the sides of the nave the windows are set in round-headed arches, and the bays are divided by pilasters. The transepts also have clasping pilasters, and at the corners these rise to two-stage turrets containing blind arcading and topped by pyramidal caps. The chancel contains three lancet windows, with a circular window above.

External features

The gates, gate piers, and the walls surrounding the churchyard are also listed at Grade II. The walls and gate piers are in sandstone. The piers have a square plan, with panelled sides, and have plain caps with pyramidal tops. The walls form a boundary on the east and south sides of the churchyard, and incorporate twelve piers similar in style to the gate piers. The gates are ramped, their railings having spear heads. There are matching railings on a section of the wall, but the other railings were replaced in the 20th century.

Appraisal

The church was designated as a Grade II listed building on 27 September 1979, and the gates, gate piers and walls on 20 December 1991. Grade II is the lowest of the three grades of listing and is applied to "buildings of national importance and special interest". Hartwell and

Pevsner Pevsner or Pevzner is a Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Aihud Pevsner (1925–2018), American physicist * Antoine Pevsner (1886–1962), Russian sculptor, brother of Naum Gabo * David Pevsner, American actor, singer, da ...

in the ''

Buildings of England The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were publish ...

'' series comment that the outline of the church "seems to owe a debt to the pinnacles at the west end of

Tewkesbury Abbey The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury–commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey–is located in the English county of Gloucestershire. A former Benedictine monastery, it is now a parish church. Considered one of the finest examples of No ...

" and that the massing of the architectural details is "reminiscent" of works by Christopher Wren and

Nicholas Hawksmoor Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principa ...

Notes and references

Notes Citations Sources *

External links