Immanuel Church is in the village of

Feniscowles Feniscowles is a village in the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire, England. It lies approximately west of Blackburn, in the civil parish of Livesey. Description The village is primarily a suburb of Blackburn, off A674 roa ...

, near

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the River Ribble, Ribble Valley, east of Preston ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. It is an active

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), 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 com ...

in the deanery of Blackburn with Darwen, the archdeaconry of Blackburn, and the

diocese of Blackburn The diocese of Blackburn is diocese of the Church of England in North West England. Its boundaries correspond to northern Lancashire. The diocese contains 211 parishes and 280 churches. Blackburn Cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Blackburn ...

. 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, ...

as a designated Grade II

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The church was built in 1835–36. Its architect is uncertain. Although this is self-published, it is a scholarly work and fully referenced throughout. (As of 2011 it is available only as a CD.) In the ''

Buildings of England The ''Pevsner Architectural Guides'' are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. ''The Buildings of England'' series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes pub ...

'' series Hartwell and Pevsner credit the design to J. W. Whittaker, the Vicar of Blackburn. In the ''

'' it is credited to Whittaker's cousin, the

Lancaster Lancaster may refer to: Lands and titles *The County Palatine of Lancaster, a synonym for Lancashire *Duchy of Lancaster, one of only two British royal duchies *Duke of Lancaster *Earl of Lancaster *House of Lancaster, a British royal dynasty ...

architect

Edmund Sharpe Edmund Sharpe (31 October 1809 – 8 May 1877) was an English architect, architectural historian, railway engineer and sanitary reformer. Born in Knutsford, Cheshire, he was educated first by his parents and then at schools locally and in ...

. Whittaker certainly made the first design for the church, but whether this was replaced or amended by Sharpe is uncertain. The church cost £1,000 (equivalent to £ in ). The foundation stone was laid on 5 February 1835 by William Feilden, who had given the land for the church, and paid £100 towards its construction. The church was consecrated on 10 October 1836. It was restored in 1931–32 by

Austin and Paley Sharpe, Paley and Austin are the surnames of architects who practised in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, between 1835 and 1946, working either alone or in partnership. The full names of the principals in their practice, which went under variou ...

, the successors in Sharpe's practice. During the restoration the original

box pew A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th centuries. History in England Before the rise of Protestantism, seating was not customary in c ...

s were removed, a

pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...

and chancel screen were added, the lower part of the walls were panelled, and the church was re-floored.

Architecture

Exterior

Immanuel Church is constructed in

gritstone Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for ...

with a

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

roof. Its plan consists of a

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 ...

and

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

in one cell, a southwest porch, and a west tower with a spire. The tower is short, in two stages, and is embraced by the nave. It has diagonal

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings, as a means of providing support to act ...

es, a two-light west window, and rectangular louvred bell openings. The spire is set back and contains

lucarne In general architecture a lucarne is a dormer window. The term is borrowed from , which refers to a dormer window, usually one set into the middle of a roof although it can also apply to a façade lucarne, where the gable of the lucarne is aligne ...

s. There were originally eight

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was main ...

s, but these were removed because of erosion. The windows on the sides of the church are large and straight-headed, with

Perpendicular In geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at right angles, i.e. at an angle of 90 degrees or π/2 radians. The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the '' perpendicular symbol'', � ...

tracery Tracery is an architectural device by which windows (or screens, panels, and vaults) are divided into sections of various proportions by stone ''bars'' or ''ribs'' of moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the stonework elements that support th ...

. The east window contains Decorated tracery.

Interior

Inside the church is a west gallery carried on slim iron columns. The stained glass in the east window is dated 1861 and is possibly by Hardman & Co. On the north side of the church are windows dating from the early 20th century by

Heaton, Butler and Bayne Heaton, Butler and Bayne was a British firm that produced stained-glass windows from 1862 to 1953. History Clement Heaton (1824–1882) Fleming, John & Hugh Honour. (1977) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts. '' London: Allen Lane, p. 371 ...

, and on the south side, dated 1907, are windows by Curtis, Ward and Hughes. The two- manual organ in the west gallery was built by Jardine and Company in 1949, when some of the pipes from the earlier organ built in 1899 by Ernest Wadsworth were reused. The church bell is an eighteenth-century Javanese bell with a dated Javanese inscription originally from Gresik in East Java and donated by a member of the Feilden family who served in Egypt, India and Java during the Napoleonic Wars.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Immanuel Church, Feniscowles Feniscowles, Immanuel Church Feniscowles, Immanuel Church Churches completed in 1836 19th-century Church of England church buildings Gothic Revival church buildings in England Gothic Revival architecture in Lancashire Feniscowles, Immanuel Church Churches in Blackburn with Darwen

History

Architecture

Exterior

Interior

See also

References