A large and striking building, built to serve as a landmark on a new housing estate. The design is eclectic, combining elements of both north and south European Gothic styles, as well as some classical elements. ‘Rarely has there been such a haphazard assortment of styles in one church’ (Pollard/Pevsner).

The church was built in 1935-7 to serve the vast new interwar housing estate of Norris Green, northeast of the city centre, laid out by Liverpool City Council in the 1920s and 1930s. It was built to accommodate 1,000 people. The architect, F. E. G. Badger, was an engineer who was Director of Housing to Liverpool City Council until 1925.

Description

A large red brick church in a vaguely German Gothic style with roof coverings of slate. Massively tall nave with twin towers flanking the western gable end, low aisles on either side with curved western ends, shallow transeptal projections at the eastern end. The west end has a single-storey triple porch reached up steps; above is a tall three-light  window with flat brick interlace tracery, the gable has stepped blind lancets in very Germanic fashion. The western towers with their hipped slated roofs are rectangular in plan; the shorter western sides are blind apart from a single extremely tall lancet just below the roof, the outer (liturgical) north and south sides have long single lancet openings in the lower part, with five close-set lancet belfry openings above. The side aisles with their very unusual western ends curving into the tower have small single windows. The south aisle has a gabled porch at its east and west ends, the latter with a conspicuous modern brick approach-ramp; the tall nave walls above have highly unusual long lancet window openings set in raised brick surrounds,  with small-paned bowed windows under ornamental copper heads. A brick corbel table runs the length of the wall beneath the eaves. At the eastern end are small transepts and an apse with canted sides.

The interior is equally unconventional. The tall nave walls with their long windows are carried on low brick arches resting on simple cylindrical columns with cushion capitals. The low aisles have plaster vaulted ceilings, the nave has a Gothic plaster rib vault carried down between the stepped brick reveals of the windows as fluted Classical pilaster-strips. At the west end of the nave is a timber organ gallery, now glazed beneath. At the east end the shallow apsidal sanctuary has a rib-vaulted ceiling; the walls are lined with marble below the cills of the windows which have stained glass in four of the five lancets. The timber benches are presumably the original ones.

Heritage Details