A plain interwar brick church in the Gothic style. The interior has been considerably altered.

The parish was established in 1934 to serve a new housing estate. At first Mass was said in the local cemetery chapel, a building which was clearly inadequate to the needs of the parish. When the school was built, the hall was used for Mass, and the classrooms as confessionals. The church was opened in May 1938, from designs by Anthony Ellis, who was also architect of the school (contractor for both was Messrs Doyle).

Description

The church is faced with red brick and has slate roof coverings. On plan, the building has a large aisleless nave and short sanctuary under one roof with a northwest tower. The tower has set-back buttresses, tall paired lancet windows on all faces for the belfry and a plain parapet. The tall barn-like nave is nine bays long; each bay has a pair of tall plain lancet windows, those in the second, fifth and seventh bays from the west taller than the rest and set in shallow gabled projections. There is an additional bay for the sanctuary.

The interior is very plain, with plastered walls above a bare brick dado and a curving pointed timber boarded ceiling with timber cross-ribs. At the east end a tall pointed arch opens into the apsidal sanctuary and lower arches either side open into the chapels. At the west end the first three bays are now filled with parish rooms built to half-height, with an organ gallery above which has a projecting timber balcony. The church has been reordered, and the marble altar now stands on a platform in front of  the altar rails, but the original reredos remains on the eastern wall of the sanctuary.

Heritage Details