St Mary Immaculate

Introduction

The church was built in 1859-60 by Edward Welby Pugin. JRR Tolkien married Edith Bratt here on 22 March 1916.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is in High Victorian Gothic style with red brick and stone dressings. The interior has painted roundels of the Saints by Alphege Pippet of Hardman and Co. The church contains a carved stone altar panel depicting the Last Supper and a stone reredos with angels in arcade. The church has a stone polygonal pulpit.

The west gable contains a large plate-tracery rose window set in a moulded pointed arch and flanked by buttresses. Below the rose window the west front has quadruple pointed arch windows, and a statue niche stands to the right. Broad stone bands divide the west front, with the lowest band continuing into a gallery turret on the right. A pointed arch doorway on the left of the west front opens into the end of the lean-to aisle.

Sexfoil clerestory windows appear in the sides above the aisles. On the ridge behind the west gable stands a timber bellcote with a slate spire and a wrought iron cross. Similar crosses are placed over the apse and over the gallery stair tower. The interior is lit only from the clerestory and the west window, with the nave and apse in one and an arched brace roof on corbels with exposed purlins and rafters.

The walls are plastered and carry painted decoration. The nave and aisles have 3-bay arcades with moulded pointed arches on circular piers. High in the apse is a sexfoil window in a pointed arch flanked by cusped lancets with colonettes. The clerestory windows have pointed rear arches.

At the west end is a timber gallery that holds the organ. The blind aisle windows contain painted stations of the cross. The sanctuary has been reordered.

The altar at St Mary Immaculate has pictures of the Saints and Martyrs with surrounding Latin prayers. The three apse centre windows, made by Hardman in 1862, depict St Mary the Queen of Heaven with Jesus, flanked by Moses and the burning bush to the right and St John to the left. The west window, above the gallery, was designed and produced by John Hardman Studios in 1973, a large round window depicting Christ the King surrounded by eight small windows depicting saints. Visitors may enter through the side door of the church and turn left, and the parish office is open three days each week.

Music and liturgy

The choir has included chant for singing the Introit, and hopes to sing more of both the Proper and the Ordinary of the Liturgy. The choir holds four rehearsals at set times before Easter to practise for Holy Week.

Regular events

The flower arrangers organise themselves around the liturgical year on a rota and help out for the big feasts and the heritage open day. The brass polishing group meets four or five times per year to polish candlesticks and other items for the major feasts especially Christmas and Easter. The parish prays two rosaries a day between 40 people in two Rosary prayer groups.