St Mary, Chorley

Introduction

St Mary, Chorley, in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, was built in 1853-4 by Joseph A. Hansom, with a north-east tower added in 1894 by Pugin and Pugin.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of sandstone with a slate roof, and its nave is embraced by flat-roofed aisles and a long pitched-roof porch at the west end. The four-stage tower, attached in the north-east angle, has angle buttresses, a diagonal stair turret, and a traceried parapet with pinnacles. The interior has a nave with broad piers and depressed arches giving onto aisles, and a ribbed wagon roof supported by hammerbeams and struts. Most windows of the nave and transepts have two cusped lights with a quatrefoil in the head.

The west window has three lights with elongated trefoil tracery. The north transept has a large five-light window with unusual slim Perpendicular tracery containing elongated trefoils. The apse has three groups of three small cusped lancets.

Sacraments and pastoral care

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