Listed Building: CHURCH OF ST GEORGE (1088140)

Church. 1829-30 by R D Chantrell in the lancet style, chancel 1897-98 by Preston and Vaughan in a matching style. Chancel refurbishment of the 1950s. Squared masonry brought to course with freestone dressings and slate roofs. Plan of galleried nave, chancel, W tower, NE and NW vestries. EXTERIOR: Chancel with clasping buttresses with gabled detail. The buttresses rise as octagonal pinnacles with spirelet finials. The chancel has a shallow gable with a very tall triple lancet E window with a continuous hoodmould. The vestries have angle buttresses, coped parapets and lancet windows. 7-bay nave with tall buttresses, a dentil eaves cornice and lancet windows with a roll-moulding carried on shafts. The blocks containing the gallery stairs have angle buttresses, coped parapet and high set W lancet windows. The S block has a S doorway with a roll-moulded arch on shafts and gables over. Slender tower with very big angle buttresses with set-offs which terminate in octagonal pinnacles with spire finials. The projecting stair turret on the N face has its own chamfered doorway. The tower has a recessed spire with 2 tiers of lucarnes. The W doorway is in a shallow projecting gabled porch and has two orders of shafts and a double roll-moulded arch. Tall lancet W window with shafts in a chamfered opening, lancet belfry windows. INTERIOR: Plastered and painted. There is no chancel arch but a square-headed opening to the sanctuary and a timber chancel screen with a commemoration date of 1954 in a conservative style for the date with large cusped openings, coving, cresting and rood figures. The polygonal timber pulpit is integral with the screen and entered from inside the chancel. It has buttresses to each face, carved decoration and linenfold panelling. There is an arched W doorway into the tower under the W gallery. The plastered nave ceiling has slightly cranked moulded cross beams on short shafts on moulded corbels. 3-sided gallery on clustered cast iron columns with depressed segmental arches between the columns. The gallery front is decorated with modest Gothick blind tracery. The W gallery has a central square headed opening into the tower, flanked by chamfered arched doorway, 2 on each side. Stone gallery stairs. In chancel a c.1950 timber reredos, divided into panels with painted timber figures under canopies. The crested traceried frame rises above the central figure of the Crucifixion. 1890s trefoil-headed sedilia and piscina on the S wall of the chancel. Choir stalls with ends with roundel finials and a frieze of open tracery. Nave benches with shouldered ends of complex profile. Late C19 font with an octagonal stone bowl with an embattled cornice, the sides of the bowl decorated with carved angels and the octagonal stem with pink marble shafts with carved capitals. Stained glass includes one window dated 1893 and signed by Powell Bros of Leeds, another window signed by Jones and Willis is dated 1913. The E window is dated 1952. Pevsner notes that the organ case is 1835 by Samuel Renn. HISTORY: R.D. Chantrell was a pupil of Sir John Soane and between 1823 and 1850 he designed at least 25 churches. SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This is a large church of 1829-30 by R D Chantrell, a pupil of Sir John Soane, in the lancet style. It is built of squared masonry brought to course with freestone dressings and slate roofs. The exterior is well designed with good decorative detail and a west tower and spire. The interior preserves galleries on three sides. The chancel was rebuilt in 1897-98 by Preston and Vaughan and the interior of this was again refurbished in the 1950's when the screen and reredos were added. SOURCES: Pevsner, Derbyshire, 1986 edn., 287 Information from the incumbent