CHURCH OF THE HOLY ROOD (ROMAN CATHOLIC)

Overview

Location

Details

SE3406SW BARNSLEY GEORGE STREET (east side), Barnsley 9/32 Church of the Holy Rood (Roman Catholic) GV II Roman Catholic church. 1905 by Edward Simpson of Bradford assisted by his son Charles. Squared, coursed stone with ashlar dressings. Welsh slate roof. Late Victorian Gothic style. North-west tower. 5-bay nave with 4-bay lean-to aisles and a south-west baptistry, 2-bay transepts, 2-bay apsidal chancel with 3-bay south chapel. The square tower becomes octagonal with tall single-light louvred belfry openings and stone spire with gargoyles and moulded bands. West portal with 2 cusped doorways and a carved crucifix in tympanum. Large 6-light west window with Decorated tracery and quatrefoil in head. 5-sided baptistry with hipped roof. Aisles are plain to lower half, buttressed to upper half with small 2-light windows with cusped heads and small trefoils. South transept windows are tall, of 3-lights with Perpendicular tracery. North transept windows are shorter and of 4 lights. 2- and 3-light chancel and south chapel windows.

Interior: 6-bay arcades, the aisles being transverse vaulted in brickwork and with stone ribs. Bays 5 and 6 form the crossing and the 2-bay transepts are similarly vaulted but taller. Elongated, octagonal piers with attached colonnettes. Arch-braced hammer-beam panelled roof to nave and chancel. Two traceried recesses to each side, alternate with the confessionals, contain 2 marble sculptures: a Piéta and St. Patrick, and 2 stone sculptures of St. Michael and St. Anthony. Above these is a blind, traceried frieze into which are set 14, tessallated, stations of the cross, the work of the artist Gabriel Pippett of Birmingham, which were erected by the congregation as a 1st World War Memorial. The bays of the apsidal east end are marked by slender, pale green and dark green marble colonnettes. 4 sculpted heads to each side. The elaborate, traceried, and pinnacled altar and reredos is the work of R. B. Wall of Cheltenham: a carved panel altar frontispiece of the Last Supper, and 2 panels in the reredos of the Finding of the Cross, and the Exaltation of the Cross, flanked by two similar panels of Christ carrying the Cross and Abraham leading Isaac. Holy Rood in recess above. Organ gallery at rear with ambulatory under. Lady chapel to south lined in white marble with opus sectile pictures on walls.

An example of Simpson's later work compared to his many Roman Catholic churches in High Victorian style.

Listing NGR: SE3427906132

This List entry has been amended to add the source for War Memorials Register. This source was not used in the compilation of this List entry but is added here as a guide for further reading, 27 October 2017.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

333719

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Websites
War Memorials Register, accessed 27 October 2017 from http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/28027

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.