St Peter's Church, Bolton

St Peter’s Church stands on a hill above the River Croal in the centre of Bolton. The present building, completed in 1871, is the fourth church on this site and was designed by E. G. Paley in the Gothic Revival style. It is built of ashlar sandstone with slate roofs and has a tall west tower rising to 55 metres. The tower is the tallest in historic Lancashire and has four stages with decorated windows and a west door with ornate ironwork. The nave is 48 metres long and 20 metres wide, with aisles, transepts and a chancel that includes a lady chapel. The church holds fragments from earlier buildings on the same spot. When the 15th-century church was demolished in 1866, builders found pre-Norman stones, a broken preaching cross and remains of Anglo-Saxon and Norman churches. These artefacts are displayed in a museum corner inside the present church. The building also contains original fittings such as encaustic tiled floors by Minton, a panelled pulpit with wrought-iron rail, and seating from the 18th century. Three medieval misericords survive from the earlier church. Visitors enter through the south porch with its wrought-iron screen and walk past the tower’s polished granite shafts. Inside, the five-bay nave has buttressed aisles and a clerestory with paired windows and gargoyles. The chancel’s seven-light east window is filled with tracery, and the lady chapel has two-light windows to the south. The organ, rebuilt in 2008, has nearly 3,000 pipes, the largest sixteen feet long. The tower houses eight bells, five cast in 1699 and three in 1806, with later additions from Saviour’s Church.