A modest interwar building of conservative design, built by Spink of Bridlington in collaboration with Bishop Shine. Very similar to Holy Name, Hull.

A school-chapel in Malpas Road with a resident priest was established at Northallerton in 1871, in a building designed by George Goldie (Pevsner erroneously attributes the design of the present church to Goldie). The foundation stone of the present building, with 300 sittings, was laid by Bishop Shine in December 1933 and the church opened in June 1934. Bishop Shine and the builder Spink of Bridlington collaborated on the design of a number of churches in the diocese, although the precise extent of the bishop’s involvement, here and elsewhere, is not clear. The account of the opening in The Tablet (7 July 1934) states ‘…a dignified church has been erected, from designs due, in the first place, to the Bishop himself’. The somewhat toy-like design is very similar to that of the contemporary Holy Name, Hull (qv), another Shine/Spink collaboration.

Description 

The church is built of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with dressings of sandstone and roof coverings of Welsh slate. The plan comprises an aisleless nave, with projecting square western porch apsidal sanctuary, square southeast tower and a miniscule northeast baptistery. The building stands on rising ground and the west porch is reached by steps. The single- storey porch has a pointed central door flanked by oeil-de-boeuf windows and a battlemented parapet. The west wall has three lancet windows over the porch with a coat of arms in the gable and thin brick corner towers which rise to small octagonal turrets. The side walls have narrow lancet windows between stepped buttresses. The low northeast tower is square on plan with a single lancet on each face of the bell stage and a battlemented parapet with small corner pinnacles. The apsidal sanctuary has to small lancets a side.

The interior is simple, with plain plastered walls and a boarded ceiling with the tie-beams and principals of the roof shown beneath the boarding.  There is a west organ gallery, whose front is decorated with what appears to be paper mosaic representations of the Stations of the Cross. In the east wall is a simple pointed arch to the sanctuary, which has modern stained glass, and there is a similar but smaller arch to the former baptistery. The windows in the body of the church are mostly clear glazed. Above the doorway to the sacristy is an early or mid-eighteenth century oil painting of the Assumption of the Virgin. or copy thereof.

Amended by AHP 15.01.2021

Heritage Details