Building » Gateshead – St Anne

Gateshead – St Anne

Rokeby View, Low Fell, Harlow Green, Gateshead NE9

A dual-purpose church and hall, built in the 1970s to serve a housing estate, and incorporating some historic features of unknown provenance. 

This site was agricultural land until about 1950, when a housing estate was built at Harlow Green. The parish was erected in 1968 and a combined church and parish centre built in 1975-76. The architect was Wilfrid McCann, completing the designs initiated by his late partner, Anthony J. Rossi. The builder was Michael Grady of Newcastle and the cost was £70,000. The parish centre was opened by Bishop Lindsay on 16 March 1976.

Description

The square-plan outer wall of the church has plain dark russet brick walls with recessed pointing; the s are of cement slate and mineral felt, with two triangular upstands providing vertical roof lights over the entrance and the sanctuary. The plan seems to be irregular but is simple, for the church is diagonally-set on that square base, and the hall is an eastern extension. The flat-roofed porch is at the northeast; ritual east is at the southwest, and ritual orientation will be referred to in this description. At northwest, glazed double doors have a plain brown surround, and service doors with soldier-coursed lintels, or facing to lintels, are to the right of them.

Inside, sturdy plain pews are arranged in blocks facing the sanctuary; in the sanctuary is a reused grey marble altar of unknown provenance, possibly nineteenth-century in date, with four Corinthian shafts and set diagonally in front of a simple tabernacle on a corner shelf. A crucifix hangs above the tabernacle. The timber font is set in a niche north of the altar, and a timber ambo stands near the edge of the sanctuary platform, near the font. Flanking the tabernacle are two rectangular windows filled with historic stained glass signed by Meyer & Co. of Munich; their provenance has not been established. They are backed with Georgian wire glazing. At the back of the church a partly-glazed screen allows sight of the church from the narthex. 

Heritage Details

Architect: Rossi, McCann & Partners, Consett

Original Date: 1976

Conservation Area: No

Listed Grade: Not Listed