St Mary Magdalene

MATERIALS: Coursed rubble gritstone with freestone dressings and hammer-dressed buttresses, slate roof with clay ridge tiles.

The chancel east wall is C15, with diagonal south-east buttress, but the angle north buttress and five-light Perpendicular east window are mainly C19 fabric, as is the cusped window in the embattled gable.

The chancel has a boarded keeled wagon roof and, in the south wall, a C14-C15 ogee-headed cusped piscina.

The plain octagonal font is said to be C17 but is on a C20 base.

The polygonal pulpit was brought here in 1979 from Darwen St John.

There are several monuments reinstated from the old church.

In the south chapel are damaged mid C15 effigies, said to be Sir Richard Radcliffe and his wife Catherine.

Small brass inscription panels include memorials to John Webster , astrologer, metallurgist and headmaster of the local grammar school, and John Harrison by F. Ainsworth.

In the chancel north wall is a hatchment and wall tablets to the Aspinall family, namely John Aspinall John Aspinall by the Westminster Marble Co, and John Aspinall by Poole & Sons of Westminster.

The north aisle has a memorial with portrait bust to James Thomson by F. Webster of Kendal (the bust is possibly by Thomas Duckett of Preston), and Thomas Southwell In the north aisle is an alabaster 1914-18 war memorial with roll call in raised letters on cast metal panels.

The east window of c1828 has heraldic glass, possibly by James Hall Miller.

There are fragments of medieval glass in tracery lights.

HISTORY: An earlier church was granted to the Priory of St John, Pontefract, in 1122.

The east end of the chancel, including a piscina, is also C14-C15.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The church of St Mary Magdalene, Church Street, Clitheroe, is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons: * For the significant surviving medieval fabric of the tower and the chancel. * The church is a good example of the work of Thomas Rickman, an important pioneer of Gothic-revival architecture in the early C19, and is one of a minority of churches of the period that has retained its galleries. * The interior has monuments of special interest, including C15 effigies, C17 brass and early-C19 Gothic tablet by Richard Westmacott, a prominent monument designer. * The church is prominently sited near the centre of the town and makes an important contribution to the historical townscape.

This List entry has been amended to add the source for War Memorials Register.