Church of St. Agnes and St. Pancras, Toxteth Park

The Church of St Agnes and St Pancras stands on Ullet Road in Toxteth Park, Liverpool. It is a red-brick church with red sandstone dressings and a tile roof, built between 1883 and 1885. The architect was John Loughborough Pearson, who created a four-bay nave with transepts at both ends. A short chancel leads to a polygonal apse, and the west end has two porches. Over the crossing rises a lead-covered flèche, while the windows are either lancets or have plate tracery. The church is recognised as one of Liverpool’s most beautiful Victorian buildings. Nikolaus Pevsner called it ‘by far the most beautiful Victorian church of Liverpool’ and an ‘epitome of Late Victorian nobility in church design’. It belongs to the Anglo-Catholic tradition and receives oversight from the Bishop of Beverley. The interior is lined with Caen stone and features marble carvings by Nathaniel Hitch. The Lady Chapel has a screen and reredos designed by G. F. Bodley, and the ambulatory is divided from the sanctuary by an arcade with statues of angel musicians. Behind the church lies the vicarage, built between 1885 and 1887 to a design by Norman Shaw. It is a red-brick building with stone dressings and an asymmetrical arrangement of windows. Attached to the church by a passage is the church hall, also designed by Shaw, with a clerestory and lean-to aisles. The stained glass includes windows by Kempe and Herbert Bryans, and the pipe organ, though no longer playable, retains its case and most of the pipework.