Church of St Aidan

St Aidan’s Church stands in Billinge, a village in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside. Built in 1716–18 to replace an earlier chapel, it replaced a structure dating from about 1539. The church was designed by Henry Sephton and enlarged in 1907–08 by T. G. Jackson. James Scarisbricke, a Liverpool merchant, gave £200 towards the original building. The church became a separate parish in 1828 and is now a Grade II* listed building. The church’s exterior mixes classical and Gothic details. Stone walls and a stone-slate roof frame a four-bay nave, a south transept, and a round apse. A west doorway is flanked by Doric columns under a small tower with Ionic pilasters. The tower holds a clock, four urns, and a cupola with a bell. Windows along the nave have round heads and reticulated tracery, while the apse windows repeat the pattern beneath a balustrade. Inside, Doric columns support round-arched arcades and a barrel-vaulted roof. A west gallery rests on slender columns, and the apse is framed by Corinthian pilasters with cherubs in the frieze. An 18th-century brass chandelier hangs overhead, and a brass lectern from 1909 copies one at York Minster. The organ, installed in 1919, has two manuals and 19 stops. In the churchyard, a Grade II tomb from 1720 shows a carved curtain and snake around a winged skull.