It is a fine summer’s day and the church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and St Michael, is looking its best. Sunlight streams in through the stained-glass windows illuminating the spacious vaulted interior. Pale stone, marble and polished wood are gleaming.

The craftsmen who worked on this church in Workington on the west Cumbrian coast are a roll call of their era. Edward Pugin (son of Augustus Welby) designed it in the early English gothic style, the firms of John Hardman of Birmingham and Francis Barnett of Leith did the stained-glass windows, the pipe organ is by K. Hill and Sons, and a mouse motif on the finely carved choir stalls indicates they were made by Robert Thompson of Kilburn, north Yorkshire.