| Description | St Paul's Church, Stansfield (SD 94660 24854). Commissioners church built c.1852.
'Commissioners Church c.1852. By Pickersgill and Oakes. Ashlar and slate roof. Single vessel of 5 bays with west tower. At east end 2 gabled porches. In the lancet style. Deeply splayed pointed single lights with hood moulds and slim offset buttresses. East window of 3 stepped lancets. Those to gable ends are gableted. Embattled tower of 4 stages with angle buttresses ending in pinnacles with oversized crockets. The church is prominent in the landscape. Interior has been gutted and is aisle less'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 22/02/1984. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1133762. Web site accessed 09/08/2013).
St Paul's Church was the subject of a planning application in 1985 for partial demolition (LBC) (Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council planning reference number LB/85/41/02799). The plan was to demolish the nave of the church but leave the tower standing. J.D. Hedges provided the consultation response.
Hedges described the church as being designed by Charles Child, a clerk of John Oates. Clerk designed several other local churches in the Calderdale district. The church is of a simple Gothic revival style using a long lancet window of the Early English period. It is constructed of high quality masonry and well coursed ashlar. Each of the five bays of the nave have a buttress set between and at the east end, the unusual twin porches flanking the east window. There is a high ashlar parapet. A tall embattled west tower has long corner pinnacles and circular recesses for clock faces on three sides. The interior roof retains its slender ribbed vault carried on carved hammer beams which have carved and pierced spandrels. Though empty the building appeared completely sound. While gutted it was largely protected from the elements.
The church has immediate group value with the adjacent Sunday school [see PRN 12488. Also listed: EH UID 339069] and form a cohesive unity which will be fragmented by the destruction of the nave. Therefore the church should not be considered in isolation. Hedges proposed that conversion to dwellings be explored before the demolition. Although similar schemes, where the nave is demolished but the tower is retained, have been granted in other parts of Calderdale, such as at King Cross, the position of St Paul's Church is entirely different. Not only is the tower prominent but also the mass of the nave. It is a sticking feature in the landscape which Hedges thought should be retained. It also has the added interest in being designed by a local person, Charles Child of Eastwood.
(Hedges, J.D. (County Archaeologist). 1986. Consultation response regarding Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council planning reference number LB/85/41/02799. St Paul's Church, Stansfield).
The church is extant on current on line map resources and may be in use as a dwelling (https://maps.google.co.uk/. Web site accessed 09/08/2013). Double (garage?) doors have been inserted on the east end of the nave's north elevation at ground level which is below the parapet due to the slope of the ground. |