Listed Building record MDR12297 - St George's Church, Church Road, New Mills

This church was built in 1829-30 by R D Chantrell in the lancet style. The chancel was built in 1897-98 by Preston and Vaughan in a matching style. The chancel was refurbished in the 1950s. It is built of squared masonry brought to course, with freestone dressings and slate roofs. It has a plan of galleried nave, chancel, west tower, and northeast and northwest vestries. The chancel has 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 east window that has a continuous hoodmould. The vestries have angle buttresses, coped parapets and lancet windows. The seven-bay nave has 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 west lancet windows. The south block has a south doorway with a roll-moulded arch on shafts and gables over. The slender tower has very big angle buttresses with set-offs, which terminate in octagonal pinnacles with spire finials. The projecting stair turret on the north face has its own chamfered doorway. The tower has a recessed spire with two tiers of lucarnes. The west doorway is in a shallow projecting gabled porch and has two orders of shafts and a double roll-moulded arch. There is a tall lancet west window with shafts in a chamfered opening, and lancet belfry windows. The interior has been 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 west doorway into the tower under the west gallery. The plastered nave ceiling has slightly cranked moulded cross beams on short shafts on moulded corbels. Three-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 west gallery has a central square headed opening into the tower, flanked by chamfered arched doorway, two on each side. There are stone gallery stairs. In the chancel there is 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. There are 1890s trefoil-headed sedilia and piscina on the south wall of the chancel. The choir stalls have ends with roundel finials and a frieze of open tracery. The nave benches have shouldered ends of complex profile. There is a late 19th century font with an octagonal stone bowl that has an embattled cornice. The sides of the bowl are decorated with carved angels and the octagonal stem has pink marble shafts with carved capitals. The stained glass includes one window dated 1893 and signed by Powell Bros of Leeds, and another window signed by Jones and Willis is dated 1913. The east window is dated 1952. Pevsner notes that the organ case is 1835 by Samuel Renn. This is a large church of 1829-30 by R D Chantrell, a pupil of Sir John Soane, in the lancet style. 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. (1)