A plain design of the 1950s, serving an estate of council housing.

The parish was erected and the church and presbytery built in 1955. The architects were Greenhalgh & Williams of Bolton (information from Lawrence Gregory, Diocesan Archives). The church occupies a large site, and it may be that it was intended to become the hall for a separate church, never built. The church is part of the Holy Family parish, served from St Joseph’s, Blackburn (qv).

Description

The building is not oriented, but this description follows liturgical convention, as if the altar was at the east.

The church is built on a sloping site, with a hall built beneath its west end.  It is built of buff-coloured brick, under a pitched slate roof. It consists of a wide nave, with a short square-ended chancel and a gabled south porch. The windows have plain cast stone surrounds, with shallow projecting segmental canopies. The windowless chancel wall features a large integral rendered cross, and has projecting headers forming a diaper pattern. At the west end, the church is built over an infilled arcade with square piers and segmental arches.

The interior has not been inspected, but photographs in the Diocesan Archives show a wide aisleless nave, a low raised gallery at the west end reached by stairs on either side, and a short chancel at the east end separated from the nave by a plain rounded arch.  The sanctuary furniture is of polished marble, and belongs to a post-Vatican II reordering. The pews appear to be original, similar to the mahogany ones at Holy Souls, Blackburn.

Heritage Details