Our Lady and St. Wilfrid's Roman Catholic church, Warwick Bridge

A modest red-brick church stands beside the River Eden in Warwick Bridge, a village within the parish of Wetheral. Augustus Welby Pugin designed the building in the early 1840s for the Sarum Rite, giving it an Easter Sepulchre as its centrepiece. The church was completed for £2,586 on land provided by Henry Howard of Corby Castle. Pugin also planned the presbytery and its surrounding grounds as part of the original scheme. The site overlooks fields that slope down to the river, linking the sacred and the rural landscape. Inside, visitors find stained glass presented by Philip Howard between 1860 and 1867, made by John Hardman. The windows depict English saints including Thomas More and Oliver Plunkett. Statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and the Sacred Heart of Jesus stand on either side of the nave. A small mounted Infant of Prague occupies a side shelf, while a reliquary holds relics of Saint Petronia. The relics travelled from Cardinal Merry del Val through the Maxwell-Stuart family to reach this church. The church has long served as a local centre for Catholic worship. Benedictine monks from Ampleforth once ran the parish, and it was twinned with St Ninian’s Chapel in Brampton. Together with two Carlisle churches it formed the short-lived parish of Our Lady of Eden from 2014 to 2020. Today it belongs to the larger parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help covering Carlisle and district. The Diocese of Lancaster oversees its life, and Thursday morning Mass draws a small congregation.