St John the Evangelist's Church, Kirkham

St John the Evangelist's Church, long known as "The Willows", is a Roman Catholic parish church in Ribby Road, Kirkham, a market town on the Fylde plain of Lancashire. It is a building of real distinction, for it was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin — the greatest architect of the Gothic Revival and the genius behind the decoration of the Houses of Parliament — and it stands as one of his finest churches in the north of England. A Grade II listed building in the Diocese of Lancaster, with a graceful spire rising a hundred feet above the town, The Willows is a place where the high ideals of Pugin's Gothic vision were realised in stone for the Catholic community of the Fylde.

The Catholic presence in Kirkham, like much of Lancashire, survived the long penal years and revived in the nineteenth century. The first Roman Catholic chapel in the town was built in 1809, dedicated to the Holy Cross, and was known as "The Willows" because it stood in an area surrounded by willow trees — a name that has clung to the parish ever since, even after the chapel itself was replaced. That replacement was the present church, built between 1842 and 1845 to the designs of A. W. N. Pugin at a cost said to be £10,000. It was an ambitious building, designed to hold between 500 and 600 worshippers, and was remarkably advanced for its day in some respects — heated by warm air drawn from an underfloor furnace — though, charmingly, its only lighting was by hand-held candles carried by the congregation.

The church was consecrated on 22 April 1845 by the Right Reverend George Brown, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool, and the formal opening took place the following day — St George's Day — with great ceremony. Four bishops and many clergy attended, along with two hundred guests brought by special train from Preston; after a procession the office of terce was sung, a choir from St Augustine's in Preston sang a High Mass set to music by Mozart and Haydn, a Scottish bishop preached the sermon, and the whole was crowned with a Te Deum of thanksgiving. It was a grand statement of the new confidence of English Catholicism, and a fitting celebration of one of Pugin's most accomplished churches.

The church is built of sandstone from nearby Longridge, with slate roofs, in the early Decorated Gothic style that Pugin championed as the truest expression of Christian architecture. It consists of a five-bay nave with a clerestory and aisles, a south porch, a chancel with aisles, and a sanctuary; to the north-east is a vestry block, and at the west end rises the steeple that is the church's crowning glory. The tower has angle buttresses and a stair turret, a moulded west doorway with a window above, and bell openings beneath a continuous hood mould; upon it stands a broach spire with three tiers of lucarnes — the small gabled openings that lighten its mass — and a coronet of blind lucarnes at its base, rising to a height of a hundred feet. The clerestory is lit by a row of quatrefoil windows, and cross finials crown the gables, giving the whole building the authentic Gothic character that Pugin sought.

The interior was altered in later years. From 1895 the parish priest, Father Francis John Gillow, made a number of changes: the floor was lowered by about two feet and the steps at the west entrance removed, Pugin's original altar was moved to a side chapel, and the rood screen was relocated to the west end and altered to fit. In 1906 Gillow installed a new main altar, a pulpit, benches and Stations of the Cross. Despite these changes, the church remains a powerful and coherent expression of Pugin's vision, and one of the most important Catholic churches on the Fylde.

In recent times the parish has been reorganised: in 2011 it was linked with that of St Joseph at Wesham, and in 2013 the two were joined to form the Parish of the Holy Cross — a name that reaches back to the dedication of the original chapel of 1809. The church continues as an active and well-loved place of worship, its spire a familiar landmark and its Pugin architecture a source of pride to the community.

The church stands in Kirkham, an ancient market town in the Fylde district of Lancashire, set on the plain between the city of Preston and the seaside resort of Blackpool. The town, with its old grammar school and its Georgian and Victorian streets, lies amid the rich farmland of the Fylde; the windmills and villages of the plain, the nature reserves of the Ribble estuary, the historic town of Lytham St Annes with its windmill and seafront, and the bright lights of Blackpool with its Tower and Pleasure Beach are all within easy reach.

From a willow-surrounded chapel of 1809, through the building of A. W. N. Pugin's great church between 1842 and 1845 and its grand consecration, the later alterations of Father Gillow, and the modern union that created the Parish of the Holy Cross, St John the Evangelist's Church gathers two centuries of Catholic history on the Fylde into one building. A Grade II listed church by the master of the Gothic Revival, "The Willows" remains the living Roman Catholic parish church of Kirkham — a Pugin masterpiece whose hundred-foot spire still watches over the Lancashire plain.