Our Blessed Lady and St Joseph

Introduction

Our Blessed Lady and St Joseph in Brooms, in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, was built in 1866-9 by Edward Welby Pugin.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of snecked sandstone with quoins and ashlar dressings and a Welsh slate roof. The church has an aisled nave with north porch and chancel in the Decorated style. The interior has painted plaster with ashlar dressings and arcades, and a scissor-braced nave roof. The church has a high quality Gothic-style Caen stone altar and reredos.

Most of the glass is original, in simple geometric patterns, with a pictorial west window with a Lamb in the centre. The church has a chancel with a 3-sided apse containing 5 groups of 3 cusped lancets. The church has a wide segmental-arched west gallery. The church has a panelled chancel roof on marble shafts with C13-style capitals and angel corbels.

The church has boarded double doors with elaborate iron hinges in a chamfered and moulded 2-centred arch in the east face of the buttressed, gabled porch. The church has rerearches to all windows. The church has arcades with 2-centred moulded arches on alternate round and octagonal piers. The church has a steeply-pitched roof with pent over aisles and small cross gable over roundel in each eastern bay. The church has stone cross finials at west and on cross gables, and a small east gabled dormer and wrought iron cross finial.