A timber and steel frame multi-functional building of 1964, pleasantly updated internally at the end of the last century.

Widdrington Station is a settlement around the station on the east coast mainline, now larger than the original village about two miles away. Fr Hugh O’Connor from Felton came to say Mass in the Working Men’s Club in the 1930s and the mission was established when a chapel was opened by Bishop McCormack in 1937. The present church replaced that building in 1964 and is a standard timber and steel framed building for the time. Fr Quinn carried out a re-ordering in the late 1990s, cutting down the pews and the reredos (the offcuts are in one of the sacristies) and repainting the interior as it is now. 

Description

The church entrance faces east. For the purposes of this report, conventional liturgical points are used, i.e. with the altar at the east end.

The church was built in 1964 and is a standard timber and steel frame building of that date, with pitched and flat felt roofs, extensive glazed panels and weather boarded walls with painted rendered panels. A rectangular building filling the site, it is divided into three areas. The flat-roofed front (west) section contains the entrance flanked to the north by a meeting room and the south by a kitchen and toilets. The large central nave has a low pitched roof with overhanging eaves. The flat roofed rear (east) section behind the sanctuary has a separate north entry to two sacristies and a south side confessional.

The sanctuary can be screened from the nave by a folding wooden partition (not used in recent memory) to allow social events in the nave. A similar partition exists in the northwest meeting room. The roof is supported off laminated beams on steel posts and a ‘chancel arch’ is created with a low triangular tympanum board. Large soft wood timber frame windows and side doors. Double part glazed internal doors at the west, single doors to the confessional (southeast) and sacristy (northeast).

The pews are not thought to be original to the building but are of the same pale wood as the late twentieth century sanctuary furniture. 

Heritage Details