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Brief
history of the Church
The
Domesday survey of 1086 records three churches in Amounderness.
One of them may have been Poulton but we cannot be sure. What we
do know is that by 1293 a church had existed since the time
of Count Roger of Poitou, who had been given Amounderness by King
William after the conquest. In 1590 the churches of the area were
described as ruinous, and the building of the new church began in
the early C17.
A description
by William Thornber in his The History of Blackpool and Its
Neighbouhood (1837) suggests the old church had stood for
"seven centuries", was of red sandstone, was double-roofed,
and had semi-circular nave arches and windows. Interestingly, late
C20 renovation work has revealed red sandstone under the ashlar
blocks,
and what may be a medieval roofline under the plaster of the west
wall.
The
west tower, a plain structure with angle buttresses, battlements,
small corner pinnacles, and round-headed bell-openings is the
oldest visible part of the church. It probably dates from the time
of Charles 1, and some have suggested that a stone in the church,
carved with the date 1636, actually commemorates its construction.
This tower predates the nave, and was judged sufficiently
acceptable to be left standing when the main part of the church
was rebuilt in 1751.
The
south doorway sets the Georgian theme for the main body of
the church. It has Tuscan columns, a frieze with triglyphs,
metopes, guttae and mutules, and is surmounted by a
triangular pediment. What at first glance appears to be a
matching priests door to the east was in fact the entrance to the
Fleetwood family vault. It is dated 1699, so, like the tower, it
was kept when the rebuilding took place. It has no columns, but
carries a broken-bed pediment on consoles, has a shouldered
architrave, and an inscription in place of the frieze.
The
windows of the nave are large, semi-circular headed, with
curved Y tracery. Pevsner suggests the tracery is a later addition
- the colour of the stone and the sharpness of the moulding do
suggest this. However, the whole arrangement is not too dissimilar
to that at Woodplumpton, and there the tracery appears to be
contemporaneous. Whatever the date, they make for a very light
interior.
The
addition of the apse in 1868 necessitated considerable internal re-arrangement
which was carried out in 1883. Gallery stairs at the east were
removed leaving entry by the beautiful Georgian staircase in
the north-west corner. Internally the extension provided a chancel
arch, and consequently greater focus on the high altar. In so
doing it transforms the original Georgian conception of a
rectangular decked hall, and reintroduces the qualities sought by
Victorian Anglicans.
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