The cathedral church of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, built from designs by A. W. Pugin as a ‘large parochial church’ on the three-aisled hall church plan adopted by Pugin at St George’s, Southwark. Later additions of note include the upper stage of the tower and spire, Dunn & Hansom’s first architectural collaboration. The interior has been altered several times, with recent changes seeking to reinstate some of the richness and colour, which had been diluted in earlier post-Vatican II reorderings. Recent additions include stained glass by Joseph Nuttgens and a new gallery and organ at the west end. Externally, the cathedral and its associated structures occupy an important position in the central conservation area, close to Dobson’s railway station. The tall, slender spire is a city landmark. 

In July 1838 a public meeting of Newcastle Catholics passed a resolution that ‘it behoves the Catholic Body to endeavour to erect a large and handsome Church, that may be at the same time an honour to their religion, an ornament to the Town, and capable to afford sittings for about twelve hundred persons’. A committee was set up to oversee the project, led by Fr James Worswick. By 1842 £6,500 had been raised and a site purchased. The leading Catholic architect of the day, A. W. N. Pugin, was commissioned to prepare designs, and a contract was let to George Myers, Pugin’s builder of choice (who also did the stone carving on some of the main furnishings). Pugin’s plans included a tower and spire, but the budget did not allow for these to be built immediately.

The church was opened on 21 August 1844, and the first resident priest was the Rev. William Riddell, who had some months earlier been appointed auxiliary to Bishop Mostyn, Vicar-Apostolic of the Northern District.

After the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, St Mary’s became the cathedral church of the new Diocese of Hexham (from 1861 Hexham and Newcastle). The cathedral was consecrated on 21 August 1860.

In 1853 a rood screen with suspended rood figures was installed at the chancel arch, from designs by George Goldie. It was the gift of Miss Riddell of Felton Park.

In 1863 an altar tomb was installed in memory of Bishop Riddell, from designs by A.M. Dunn.

In 1872 the upper stages of the tower and a spire were added from designs by Dunn & Hansom, made possible by a bequest from Elizabeth Dunn, who had died in 1870. This was Dunn & Hansom’s first architectural collaboration.

In 1894, at the time of the church’s Golden Jubilee, the interior was greatly enriched with stencil decoration (later painted over) and a tiled frieze by Atkinson Brothers bearing the names of Northumbrian saints and English Martyrs added at sill level. In 1902 the baptistery, built from designs by Dunn, Hansom & Fenwicke, was opened. This had new iron gates and contained a white marble Boer War memorial (removed in the course of 1980s reordering).

The cathedral suffered bomb damage in the Second World War, when stained glass on the south side was blown out.

A reordering scheme of 1982 involved the removal of the rood screen and the relocation of the restored crucifixion above this to the side of the sanctuary. A new cathedra was installed, the old one being placed in the presbytery. The sanctuary floor was raised, a forward altar installed and the Sacred Heart Chapel reverted to being the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

In 1985 the Cathedral Centre opened; three years later it was renovated and reopened as ‘Café Cathedral’.

In 1999 the 1853 crucifix was returned to its original position under the sanctuary arch. E. W. Pugin’s statue of Our Lady was returned to the former Lady Chapel.

In 2002 the Cardinal Hume memorial garden was opened by Her Majesty the Queen. The bronze sculpture of the Newcastle-born Cardinal is by Nigel Boonham.

In 2003, the panels depicting saints Aidan, Cuthbert, Benedict Biscop and Bede, which had been housed in the cathedral café for the previous twenty years, were returned to their original (1902) location in the stone reredos in the sanctuary. In the same year the new Diocesan Books and Media Centre and Cloister Café were opened, and a new cloister built between Cathedral House and the former baptistery, creating an enclosed courtyard.

Stained glass additions in recent years have included a window by Cate Watkinson to Private Adam Wakenshaw VC (d.1942, unveiled in 2004), and three sets of windows by Joseph Nuttgens: a three-light window in the Blessed Sacrament chapel commemorating 150 years of the work of the Sisters of Mercy in the city (2005), a two-light window in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel depicting two post-Resurrection scenes (2006) and a three-light window on the south side of the cathedral commemorating Newcastle’s industrial heritage (2006). In 2006, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel was given Pugin-style stencil decoration and a neo-Gothic brass screen installed across the entrance, from designs by Kevin Doonan of Doonan Architects.

A further reordering of 2009-10 included the re-tiling the entire floor surface of the cathedral, reordering of the sanctuary and the re-siting of the font (architect Kevin Doonan).

In May 2012 work started on the building of a choir gallery at the west end of the cathedral, to hold a new three manual pipe organ built by Kenneth Tickell (architect Kevin Doonan).

Description

The cathedral is described in the list entry, below. The description of the interior is very thin for a building of this importance, and requires updating to take account of changes that have taken place since the listing, some of which are outlined above. The cathedral holds a good collection of glass by Pugin, Wailes and others; there is a full inventory in McCombie 2009, p.61 and further information is available on the cathedral website.

The presbytery is separately listed. The first phase of the house is of 1858 by E.W. Pugin, extended in 1884 by Dunn & Hansom, and in 1938 by E.R. Burke.

List description

Heritage Category: Listed Building

Grade: I

List Entry Number: 1024913

Date first listed: 14-Jun-1954

Statutory Address: CATHEDRAL OF ST MARY, CLAYTON STREET WEST

District: Newcastle upon Tyne (Metropolitan Authority)

National Grid Reference: NZ 24476 63908

NZ 2463 NW NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE CLAYTON STREET WEST (east side)

22/184 Cathedral of St. Mary 14/6/54

G.V. I

Roman Catholic Cathedral. Circa 1844; a major composition by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. Tower completed c. 1872 by A.M. Dunn and E.J. Hansom. Coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings; roofs of graduated slates with overlapping stone gable copings; stone spire. Aisled nave and chancel without division; south-west polygonal chapel now entrance porch, and to east of this the tower. Decorated style. West double door with elaborate hinges in moulded and shafted surround; 5-light window above flanked by niches with figures; reticulated tracery to 3-light west aisle windows under gables; gabled buttresses. South door, in tall tower, similar to west door; upper stages of tower have cusped lancets, slits and 2-light belfry openings under crocketed dripmould with fantastic beast finials; quatrefoil pierced parapet has corner pinnacles with spirelets; tall octagonal spire has crocketed lucarnes, weathercock finial. 3-light aisle windows, 6-light at east.

Interior: plaster above boarded dado with tiled frieze; angel corbels support scissor – braced roof trusses; round piers to 7-bay nave and chancel, with moulded arches. Caen stone altar and reredos with much carving; similar style lectern and pulpit.

The post +Newcastle-upon-Tyne – Cathedral Church of St Mary appeared first on Taking Stock.

Alnwick’s Catholics were served by itinerant priests in private homes until 1725, when the Rev. Robert Widdington SJ regularly said Mass at the home of the Coates family in Bondgate Without. A legacy from Mrs Mary Butler in 1752 ‘to support a priest in Northumberland at the choice of the Jesuit Superior’ initially funded a series of  priests but from 1757, Fr John Parker SJ was resident in a house in Baliffgate, bought by Ralph Callaly for £157 on behalf of the Jesuits. The chapel was on the upper floor of the house and a plan of c.1820 in Jesuit archives shows it had grown to fill almost the entire upper storey. It was accessed by a courtyard staircase reached through a side passage off Baliffgate.

On his appointment in 1832, Fr John Fishwick planned a new church and presbytery on the Baliffgate site and St Mary’s was opened on 8 September 1836. It cost £2100, £550 contributed by the Jesuits. The church was one of two Catholic churches designed by the prominent Newcastle architect, John Green Jnr (out of a total of twenty one churches). It is in the lancet style, without aisles or windows but top-lit with three ridge skylights, a large basement, sacristy to the east and an east apsidal recess. A new high altar and reredos by Hardman, designed by Elphege Pippet was built in 1872, displacing a large painting of the Epiphany purchased by Fr Fishwick (which was then hung on the south wall). A drawing of 1978 by O. M. Farrell in the diocesan archives shows both these features and the 1920s Stations of the Cross.

In 1865, the mission was transferred to the diocese. An elementary school had been started (in an 1845 school built for ‘dissenters’) and in 1890, Fr Edward Robert introduced four Sisters of Mercy from Guernsey to begin a secondary school for girls. Their convent is still adjacent to the church, but they no longer work in what has become the Duchess Girl’s School next door (which is soon to move to another site).

By the early 1980s, St Mary’s required a lot of repair work and was too small. With its piers and railings, it had been listed grade II in 1977. Fr Joseph Marren transferred the parish to the redundant Church of England parish church of St Paul. Reordering to allow for modern Catholic liturgical practice was undertaken by Jack Lynn of Newcastle. The dedication ceremony was performed by Bishop Hugh Lindsay on 11 December 1982. St Mary’s is now the Baliffgate Museum of Alnwick and its district, with a floor inserted into the former church.

Description

The church of St Paul is well described in the list entry (below). It was built in 1845-46 by Anthony Salvin for the Third Duke of Northumberland (d.1847), whose cenotaph by J. E. Carew is in the north chancel chapel. As part of the Church of England Pastoral Measure (redundancy) process, a detailed description was prepared for the Council for the Care of Churches (CCC) by Donald Findlay and a set of black and white photographs taken by the National Monuments Record. Copies of both are in the diocesan archives. 

The main changes made in 1982 were the introduction of an altar platform at the chancel arch with Salvin’s 1846 stone font placed to the north side (it was in a mid-nave position); the replacement of the original 1846 holy table by a free standing faceted metal and marble tabernacle for the Blessed Sacrament and the creation of a Lady Chapel at the east end of the north nave aisle. The latter re-uses most of the Hardman reredos from St Mary’s, but with the central tabernacle removed so that the centrepiece is now a pair of ogee’d panels. The 1920s Stations of the Cross from St Mary’s now hang in the nave aisles.

Salvin’s pews are solid and well designed with good foliage decoration and Decorated style tracery panelled fronts. Those in both aisles face into the nave and the plainer pews to the west of the nave doors are marked FREE. At least five of the short benches that used to fill the central nave aisle can be found in the chancel. The tower gallery housed the original organ (replaced in 1887 by the present instrument to the south of the chancel). The screen below is interrupted by a protruding ‘porch’ that seems to be made of different woodwork than the screen or pews. The side panels were once doors and the upper panel on the south is also hinged, suggesting that this part of the tower screen came from elsewhere. The upper arch was crudely filled with hardboard and the gallery area behind used for storage before 1982. In 2002 an accessible toilet was inserted into the northwest corner of the tower base, when accessible ramps were also introduced to the west door. This is the main entrance as the stone vaulted north porch (clearly designed to be the main entry as it faces the town) is now used for storage and its entrance blocked with wood and glass.

The former choir vestry (being refitted as a meeting space at the time of the visit) is an eastern extension to the priest’s vestry off the south chancel chapel, probably of the late nineteenth century. Sandwiched between it and the chancel is a semi-underground space now used for storage and the caretaker’s workshop. The area to the east of the organ in the south chancel aisle is the sacristy (with furniture from St Mary’s) which at the time of the visit was being improved. 

List description:

II*

Built 1845-6 to designs by Anthony Salvin.

MATERIALS Squared stone rubble, slate roofs. 

PLAN Nave with N and S aisles, W tower and N porch. Chancel with N and S chapels and S vestry.

EXTERIOR The church stands in an area of early C19 housing, and is situated in an attractive churchyard fringed with trees. The exterior is substantial and plain, in a Decorated style that is simple, but reasonably archaeologically correct. Large and tall W tower, as wide as the nave. Of four stages with diagonal buttresses, it has a C14-style W doorway of three chamfered orders, with a two light window above it. The third stage is very tall and has paired windows, and there are large Decorated-style bell openings in the upper stage. Blocky, embattled parapet. The aisles have two light windows with flowing tracery with buttresses between. The S porch has an outer doorway with a moulded arch on grouped shafts flanked by cinquefoil headed niches; there are trefoiled lancets in the side walls. Inside is an ambitious stone vault with foliate bosses on head corbels. The nave, aisle and chancel roofs are steeply pitched, without parapets, and the clerestory windows are a uniform two-light design. The chancel has diagonal buttresses and mostly paired lancet windows. The five light E window has curvilinear tracery with good archaeological precedent. Above it, in the chancel E gable is a circular window with swirling tracery. The N chapel is shorter than the chancel and has paired lights in the N wall and a two-light E window. The S vestry and chapel are distinguished by a cross-gable on the vestry.

INTERIOR Like the exterior, the interior is in a Decorated style. The five bay N and S arcades are uniform and have quatrefoil, clustered piers and double chamfered arches, and the chancel arch is in a similar style. Tall tower arch. Both the N and S chancel chapels have arches to the aisles, and the chapels open to the chancel arches with labels with head stops on the inner faces. The nave windows have very deep, almost straight-sided, reveals. The nave has a timber vault, resting on short colonettes springing from head corbels, that was inserted c1865. The aisle roofs are boarded and have curved braces. The chancel roof is panelled, and has closely spaced arch braces on corbel heads.

PRINCIPAL FIXTURES Exceptionally fine E window of St Paul and St Barnabas preaching of 1856, inserted in memory of the 3rd Duke of Northumberland: designed by the noted artist William Dyce (1806-64) and executed in Munich by Ainmüller. Octagonal stone font of 1846 with cusped tracery on the bowl and ball flower on the lower edge. The timber altar of 1846 has timber arcading along its front. Reredos and gothic-style sanctuary panelling with blind ogee arches of 1859. Octagonal oak pulpit with traceried panels, probably also 1846. Choir stalls with poppyheads and open traceried fronts. Altar rails with trefoil arcading. The fittings of the lady Chapel, the reredos and stations of the cross were brought to the church when it became Roman Catholic. The monument of the 3rd duke of Northumberland, d.1847 by J E Carew shows the aristocrat, resplendent in his coronet, asleep; he is buried elsewhere.

HISTORY St Paul’s was built in 1845-6 to serve a growing residential district, and cost about £12,000. It was paid for mainly by the 3rd Duke of Northumberland. The architect, Anthony Salvin (1799-1881) was a significant figure in the late Georgian and early Victorian Gothic Revival. Born in Worthing, he was a pupil of a little-known architect named John Paterson (d.1832) and worked in the office of John Nash. He set up in independent practice in 1828 and early on showed his ability to create buildings in an impressively authentic medieval style. He is also well known for a range of country house work, most notably his work on Alnwick castle, where he worked for the 4th Duke of Northumberland between 1854 and 1860. The E window, installed in 1856 as a memorial to the 3rd duke, cost £1,639 5s, of which £816 2 1d was raised by public subscription. The rest was paid by the 4th Duke of Northumberland. The designer, William Dyce (1806-1864), was a very influential artist who also executed the cartoons for the historical wall paintings in the Houses of Parliament and the decoration on the E wall of All Saints, Margaret Street, London. There was further refurnishing in the chancel in memory of Edward Bryan, curate, who drowned while bathing at Alnmouth in 1859. The church became redundant in 1979, and was converted to the Roman Catholic use; some re-ordering has gone on in recent times.

SOURCES Pevsner, N., Buildings of England: Northumberland (2002), 133-4 Council for Places of Worship report, unpublished (1979).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION The church of St Paul, Alnwick, is designated at Grade II* for the following principal reasons: * Parish church built 1845-6 in a Decorated style to designs by Salvin and funded by the 3rd Duke of Northumberland * Exceptionally fine E window designed by Dyke and made by Ainmüller of Munich, and a notable ducal tomb. * It forms part of a contemporaneous development, showing the role of the 3rd Duke in the expansion of the town, and his eagerness to provide spiritual welfare.

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Warkworth Harbour, as it was then known, came into existence in 1838. Mass was said for the Irish labourers employed to build it in various houses in the village by priests from Longhorsley, Alnwick and Felton until 1879, when the land on which the present church stands was bought and a school/chapel built and opened. It includes the site of the Manor House, supposedly a cell or grange of Tynemouth Priory (itself a dependency of St Albans Abbey). The wall fragment with a square headed two-light Perpendicular window standing in the garden to the south of the church reportedly comes from this building. The first resident priest arrived in 1887. 

In 1913, Fr J Walmesley built the church of Our Lady and St Cuthbert. In 1952, Fr Hart added the sanctuary and in 1977, Fr Malia and the men of the parish added the aisles, and renovated the church. In 1987, a further refurbishment took place that included the erection of the stone altar by Vincent Davis and work to the reredos by Andy Simms. The altar was consecrated and the centenary celebrated by Bishop Lindsay 12 June 1987. The wooden windows were replaced by PVC around 2005.

Description

The church faces northwest, being at right angles to the High Street on a bluff of land over the river. For the purposes of this report, conventional liturgical compass points are used, i.e. with the altar at the east. 

The church was first built in 1913, a sanctuary was added in 1952 and the aisles and west end added in 1977. Brick walls and tile hung west gable with PVC windows, pitched roofs with mineral fibre asbestos cement slates and flat felt roofs. A long rectangle in plan, with narrow flat-roofed aisles to the four-bay nave and a similar flat-roofed west entrance and a southeast sacristy. The sanctuary has a taller roof allowing pitched glazing in the gap to the lower nave roof to give extra light in the sanctuary. The east bay of the north nave aisle has a small gabled roof, not expressed inside. The west gable is tile-hung with a central plastic window of six divisions tucked up under the bargeboards. The boarded entrance door faces south and within is a foyer area with a toilet in the northwest corner. 

Internally, the roof trusses have various detail differences, but three in the middle of the nave with iron ties and simple V timbers on the collar are probably of the 1913 church. The 1977 aisles have timber posts supporting a lintel (timber clad steel?). The square PVC windows have an internal timber pelmet giving them a pointed head. At the west end of the nave is a storage space over the foyer.

The sanctuary is of red brick with tyrolean render externally and dark wood panelling inside, presumably of 1952 but remodelled in 1987 when the sanctuary platform was installed, obscuring the bottom of the sacristy door on the south side. The octofoil and its stained glass are probably reused from the 1913 east end, as is the gabled wooden reredos. The windows are long rectangles with internal pointed pelmets like the nave; three to the north and one to the south, all with stained glass of 1996-2006 by Iona Art Glass. The 1987 stone altar is by Vincent Davis and the present form of the reredos without the tabernacle canopy or altar is by Andy Simms.  At the west end of the nave hangs a very good print of Goya’s etching of the Descent from the Cross.

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The parish was created in the early 1950s and a local colliery company donated the land. The construction of the church and the attached presbytery was started in the summer of 1953. The outer walls were blessed on 2 December and the church was opened on 17 December 1953 by Bishop McCormack. The altar rails were made and fitted by two parishioners. Parishioners also donated the Stations of the Cross.

In the early 1970s the church was reordered and the marble altar moved forward. In 1972, an extension was built at the west which included a kitchen, a toilet and a new porch. (The additional space is now divided from the nave by folding screens for use both as meeting space and part of the church).

In the early 2000s some land was sold for a housing development. This financed some of the alterations for the Jubilee in 2003. The sanctuary wall was moved forward by 2m in order to create a new sacristy within the new space and the use of the former sacristy as an office. The sanctuary was moved slightly further west. The tabernacle was placed in a niche which formerly held a statue of the Virgin Mary. A former confessional at the southeast was converted to a Lady Chapel. Five new stained glass windows were installed using iconography with local connections, such as a pit head with a miner’s lamp, pick and shovel. Annfield Plain is a separate parish but served from Stanley.

Description

The church is built in red brick, laid in stretcher bond, with a tiled roof. The plan is rectangular with two flat-roofed projections: a porch and narthex at the northwest and the former sacristy at the northeast. The nave has a canted ceiling. The sanctuary furnishings include the marble altar and lectern and a timber font. The tabernacle is situated in a niche to the south of the sanctuary. The Lady Chapel is a converted former confessional at the southeast, with blue glass and a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Stations of the Cross are unframed timber reliefs.

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A mission was founded in Annitsford in 1863, the priest coming from Seghill. In 1866, a half-acre plot was purchased and a school/chapel building erected by Mr Foggin, builder of Newcastle, to the design of Archibald Dunn. Emmaline Shawe Storey of Arcot Hall Cramlington (now a golf club) became a Catholic in 1900 and in 1902 called on the priest at Annitsford, Fr Scott. She paid off the debt of £473 16s 4d on the school and gave him a cheque for £7000. ‘Take the field half a mile to the north of the village and build a church where the people can pray in peace and quiet’.

Fr Scott’s successor Fr Chapman (priest 1904-07) engaged a Newcastle architect and took him to Ostend in Belgium, as he is said to have wanted his church to be a replica of the cathedral, then newly rebuilt there. The name of the architect is given as J.C. Parxour in the list entry and by Pevsner, whereas Down your Aisles gives it as Mr Parkous; however it seems more likely that J. C. Parsons of Newcastle (cf St Oswald, Wrekenton, Gateshead 9, qv) was responsible; his is the name given in the report in the Morpeth Herald (14 October 1905). The contractor was J.C. Ferguson of Newcastle.

The cathedral in Ostend, St Peter and St Paul, was built in 1896-1908 by Louis de la Censerie (1838-1909) of Bruges, after its predecessor burnt down. It is said to have been modelled on Cologne Cathedral, so is very large and ornate, with twin west towers and spires. But it has an apsidal east end and is very vertical inside (as might be expected of any French Gothic church). The connection is not obvious, but is it possible that Fr Chapman had been inspired by a visit to the incomplete church in Ostend?

There was already a small cemetery here but as the area could have been subject to mining subsidence, a concrete raft foundation was laid. The foundation stone was laid by Auxiliary Bishop Collins on 7 October 1905 and he opened and consecrated the church on 22 June 1906. The contractor was J. Ferguson of Newcastle but the furnishings are of Belgian oak and made by Belgian craftsmen.

In 1959, the original chairs with straw seats were replaced by Robsons of Newcastle for £900 (though a letter in the diocesan archive gives an original estimate of £1291). An architect, Mr Burke (presumably Robert Burke), is also mentioned in the letter.

Before he left the parish in 1992, Fr Tomaney created the present sanctuary platform with a free-standing wooden altar. He removed the altar rails and formed the lectern from the pulpit taken down from its original position mounted on the eastern column of the north arcade. 

Description

The list description (below) gives an adequate account of the building, but makes no reference to the great height of the building and the narrowness of the nave/chancel space, both French concepts. The ‘ambulatory’ around the east end mentioned in the list entry is externally square and is actually formed of a series of separated sacristies and a chapel; it is not therefore a continuous aisle around the high altar as the word ambulatory suggests. It is better described as a single storey block containing sacristies that wraps around the polygonal apse, forming a square east end, with an axial east doorway with a bellcote over.

Other points:

• The northeast and southeast clerestory windows of the apse are pointed traceried lancets; the ‘vesica’ shape is within the tracery (unlike the true vesica window of the west end)
• The east bay of the south nave aisle also has a small porch and there is a transverse chapel to the south side of the chancel, possibly built as an organ chamber
• There is a brick passage linking the church to the presbytery
• A wooden Paschal candle appears to incorporate an old, possibly seventeenth century wood capital
• The large plaster Stations of the Cross are signed Maurice vanPoulle, London
• The only stained glass in the apse windows is reported to have come from the old chapel, but the coloured glass and decorative leading of the remaining windows is attractive
• Although his memorial is a simple brass plaque, mention might also be made of the opera singer Owen Brannigan, OBE born in Annitsford in 1908 and buried here in 1973. 

Entry amended by AHP 22.09.2026

List description

II

Roman Catholic Church, 1906 by Parxour. Snecked stone with flush ashlar bands and dressings; Welsh slate roof with red tile cresting. 6-bay aisled nave with south-west porch and north-west baptistery; 3-bay aisled chancel with canted apse within ambulatory. French Gothic style. Chamfered plinth, buttresses with stepped coping. Shouldered doorways to south porch, in projection to east and at east of ambulatory. Aisle and baptistery windows mostly of 2 shoulder- arched lights. Lofty west end shows 2 tall lancets with buttress between and vesica over; large moulded finial cross. Clerestorey of quatrefoiled circles, with cinquefoiled circle on east above ambulatory, flanked by pointed lights with cusped vesicas above. Nave/chancel division marked by octagonal pinnacles springing from aisles and clerestorey walls. Baptistery has steep pyramidal roof with wrought-iron finial cross; similar finial to apse. Bellcote with finial cross above east door of ambulatory.

Interior: Arcade arches narrow and steeply pointed, especially in chancel. High arch-braced timber roof on corbelled shafts; chancel arch is simply a more elaborate stone truss on triple shafts. Panelled sanctuary. Carved screens in chancel arcade. Tall carved reredos with 6 painted panels of saints and central figure of Christ in niche under pinnacle. Similar but smaller carved reredos in north Lady Chapel. Carved pulpit with figures of saints in pinnacled niches. Good wrought-iron baptistery rail.

The church is said to be modelled on Ostend Cathedral, which the architect and Father Chapman visited; it was built on a concrete raft to counteract mining subsidence. Both wood and craftsmen were brought over from Belgium.

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Ashington began to be developed as a mining town in 1852, growing to more than two thousand by 1890, with about forty Catholics who travelled to Bedlington or Morpeth for Mass. Twelve men formed a group that persuaded Fr Fossato in 1892 to come from Morpeth to say Mass at a public hall in Ashington and to establish a mission. His successor, Fr John Placid O’Hear OSB said Mass in the Co-operative hall from 1893 until the completion of the elementary school in February 1895. The adjacent presbytery was completed in August 1895 and weekday Mass was said there (in what has become the parish office) until 1905. A further half-acre plot of land to the south across Park Road was obtained from the Duke of Portland in 1899 as a parish cemetery, also housing an infant school (on the site of the 2004 St Cuthbert’s Care Centre) and the present Parkhead Parish Centre.

The foundation stone of St Aidan’s was laid by the Abbot of St Edmundsbury on 25 February 1905 and the church was opened by Abbot Taylor of Douai Abbey on 25 September, the sermon preached by the Bishop of Port Louis. It was designed by Charles Walker, architect of Newcastle and built by R. & G. Brown of Amble for about £3000. It was possibly intended to have aisles, but only a short south transeptal chapel was built.

From 1921-27, Fr William Connolly OSB (1917-36) oversaw the enhancement of the church interior, including the erection of the west gallery. He purchased oak fittings from St Mary’s Cleator Moor in 1921, to form the altar rails, gallery front and side screening below the west gallery. The installation of the memorial stained glass in the east gable rose window in 1923 (by Atkinson Bros.) initiated a campaign to enhance the sanctuary with woodwork by Ferdinand Stuflesser of Ortesi, northern Italy, installed in 1925 after redecoration by the parish. An iron girder had been installed across the chancel arch in 1923 for structural reasons and this was covered in carved wood by Stuflesser in 1925 to form a rood beam supporting the Rood figures. In 1926, the area under the west gallery became a baptistery with the laying of the mosaic floor by Rowells of Newcastle and fittings by Stuflesser.

In 1924/5 the north chapel was built, with new sacristies to the east and a confessional added to the south chapel; the altar to Our Lady removed to the gable wall. In 1925, the displaced high altar of 1905 (by Charles Beyaert of Bruges) was erected against the gable wall of the north chapel forming the Sacred Heart Chapel.

In August 1948 the Benedictines transferred the parish to the diocese.

Fr George Foster (1961-70) reordered the sanctuary, when the altar was brought forward, the rails removed and a carpeted platform built. In 1985, the Abbot’s stall and canopy was removed from the south wall of the sanctuary and about this time glass doors were added below the west gallery for use by a crèche and the nave parquet floor carpeted. A Millennium project saw the blank panels of the high altar panelling painted with Old Testament saints by Paolo Maiani. In 2002 the font was removed to the north chapel and the under gallery area became the parish piety stall. The 2005 centenary of the parish was commemorated with the commissioning of a statue of the Good Shepherd from Stuflesser Studios (seventh generation), set under an oak canopy on the north nave wall.

Description

The church has a reverse geographical orientation but in this report conventional liturgical points are used. The high altar is therefore described as being at the east end, whereas it is geographically to the west.

The church is built of red brick with a continuous slated roof. Seven-bay unaisled nave (the windowless eastern and western bays are really only half bays) with north and south chapels off the second bay from the chancel arch, southwest gabled entrance porch and two-bay chancel of the same height. The north chapel with the sacristies to its east and the eastern confessional off the south chapel were only built in 1924-25, of the same local brick. The exterior walls are enlivened with a pointed wall arch in a softer red brick sprung over the single lancet window between the buttresses (not present on the later north chapel); a similar motif is present inside. This has perhaps led to the local belief that the church was meant to be aisled.

The east elevation is unarticulated because a workshop and then the Regal cinema stood very close. There is an octofoil round window in the gable. The west end is grander as it faced the main approach from the town centre on this corner site. Tall two-light plate tracery windows either side of a central buttress with a small octofoil roundel in the gable. The only entrance is through the southwest porch; double doorway with three continuous chamfered mouldings under a gable. The internal glazed double door was installed in 1921, in the same campaign that saw the west gallery built as a choir gallery; the organ came in 1925.

The chancel arch is very tall with two orders of continuous chamfered mouldings and a hood mould. The arches to the side chapels (Sacred Heart to the north, Lady Chapel to the south) follow the shape of the internal wall arches so are simply chamfered; the two arches to the doors of the south confessional are similar.

The roof is quite a dominant feature, as the roof is at least 50° in pitch. Scissor trusses are mounted on top of hammerbeams decorated with large cusps standing on long braced wall posts on timber moulded corbels defining the bays. The iron rods seem to have been there from the start. Both chapels have boarded three-cant ceilings, the north with a central wall post and arched collar brace, the south just a shallower ceiling. The chancel has a six cant boarded ceiling with chamfered principal trusses, without wall posts.

Apart from the original high altar by Charles Beyaert of Bruges (now in the north chapel) and the statues either side of the chancel arch, all the fittings are by the north Italian firm of Stuflesser, imported in the mid-1920s and fitted by Ferdinand Stuflesser himself. The other exception is the woodwork of the gallery (and the infill on the east wall where the high altar once stood), which Fr Connolly bought for £100 from ‘St Mary’s Cleator Moor’ in 1921, presumably the E. W. Pugin church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (1869-72). Some of it was made into an altar rail, which survived to c.1970. The east octofoil is filled with 1923 glass by Atkinson Bros. of Newcastle. The small octagonal font is of unpolished Tournai Belgian marble. 

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Backworth was a significant coal-mining community with farms around it and later twentieth-century housing estates. Since the collieries closed there has been no single dominant industry. The mission was founded in 1883 from Annitsford, and became independent in 1900.  In 1903 a church and school was built from designs by Charles Walker, on land acquired from the Duke of Northumberland by Fr Henry Walmsley. This was replaced by the present church in 1954, built along with the slightly earlier presbytery) from designs by Robert Burke (plans in Tyne & Wear Archives).

Description 

A modest building in a sub-Romanesque basilican style, of red brick laid in English garden wall bond, with artificial stone dressings; all windows have projecting surrounds. The tiled roof has a raised west section with cross finial over the porch, and is hipped over the sanctuary. Three-light windows and clerestory lights in the five-bay nave, one-bay chancel and polygonal apse; lower aisles with pent roofs and gabled end projections. Orientation is conventional. The gabled west entrance front has a gabled projecting centre with recessed round-arched door in a gabled surround.

The interior has square columns supporting the clerestory, and above that, a plain strip of ceiling on paired brackets and the main ceiling gently raised. The concealed roof trusses are of steel. There is one full-width step at the sanctuary, then an apron projection with two steps to the altar and one to the tabernacle stand. The sanctuary furniture is all of good quality simple timber with tracery to the polygonal pulpit and to the altar rails, now set back against the wall.

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A mission appears to have begun in the 1860s and a school, also used for Sunday Mass, was built by 1865. It was adapted as a church running parallel to Catholic Row and a presbytery added to the site around 1876.  Both had slate roofs replaced with concrete tiles c.1970 which caused structural difficulties to such an extent that it was decided to rebuild the church. In fact, the 1876 sanctuary survives as the presbytery garage with a meeting room above, the original coffered roof running parallel to Catholic Row and the former ‘north’ sanctuary two-light window surviving at first floor level. The rendered gable may contain the chancel arch.

Vincente Stienlet is a third generation architect in the family practice founded by Pascal J. Stienlet in North Shields. St Bede’s broadly follows the form of his two earlier churches at Wetherby (St Joseph, 1984-6) and Sheffield (St Francis of Assisi, Crosspool 1990) and was built to seat 250 in 1991-92 for £589,000. Bishop Griffiths opened and consecrated the church on 23 October 1992. It won the RIBA’s Hadrian Award for Architecture in 1995.

Description

The sanctuary of this modern church is at the southwest corner of this roughly square site, with the entrance to the north east on Catholic Row that runs east-west on the north side of the site. Geographic points are used in this description.

St Bede’s church was built to the designs of Vincente Stienlet in 1991-92. Low buff brick walls with wood framed windows, two large curved roofs covered with leather coloured plain tiles and lead dressings. The nave roof opens to the northeast in a large eight-sided window crowned with a tall cross. The steeper conical roof above the sanctuary has a glazed area to the east ridge to light the tabernacle inside and another glazed area at wall plate level behind to light the small areas for private prayer behind the sanctuary. The interior has partly plastered low walls over a continuous soldier course plinth but it is dominated by the wide sweep of the plaster ceilings. The large northeast and southwest walls are faced with panels of pale plywood; the latter has been worked to reveal darker coloured ‘flames’ rising above the altar. 

The worship space is fan-shaped, the sanctuary located at the hub and the entrance doors from the large narthex on Catholic Row is directly opposite. A big hall that can be opened into the church is to the east and the 1870s presbytery (which also contains a parish office and a first floor meeting room accessed by a circular staircase tower) is to the northwest along Catholic Row. The northwest wall is interrupted by the baptistery with its three sided apse formed of glass bricks (like the six sided font) and the deep narrow Lady Chapel, lit only by top lighting in the Fletton brick apse. The confessionals and sacristy are to the north corner, which also gives access to the circular staircase to the upper small meeting room formed in the former sanctuary.

The sanctuary platform is a symmetrical ‘cloud’ shape, with little extensions for the ambo in front of the altar on the north and a large wooden Celtic cross standing behind the altar on the south.  The angled white walls behind the altar hide spaces for private prayer that can focus on the top lit tabernacle set on its own platform at the apex of the fan. There are four small coloured glass crosses (by Ralph Pattison) set into the adjacent walls (invisible from the church) as further foci for prayer.

There is a ‘service platform’ on steel columns at wall plate level containing lighting and the sound system, but there are extra banks of spotlights in the roof. Wall heaters are encased in low free-standing Fletton brick walls (like the ambo and president’s chair). The large east (‘west’) window over the narthex has eight sides of two different lengths and is glazed with pale glass around a central cross on St Bede’s prayer ‘Christ the Morning Star’. By Fenwick Lawson, it is spoilt by the grid of the external glazing. Lawson was also the artist for the standing cross, statue of Our Lady and the flamed plywood wall over the altar. Fred Watson made the altar from a piece of granite salvaged from the Newcastle quayside and the tabernacle. Tim Kendall made the timber ambo with its ingenious rising lectern mechanism. Pews and chairs are to the architect’s design and the understated Stations are of white glazed ceramic.

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From at least the early eighteenth century, Benedictines served the Catholics of a wide area around Bellingham from Hesleyside Hall, about two miles west of the village and  home of the Charlton family since the Middle Ages; or Tone Hall about five miles east. The mission is documented as being founded in 1794 and a chapel was created but abandoned by 1808. The last Benedictine chaplain left Hesleyside Hall in 1833 and a priest only came to live in Bellingham after the church and presbytery were built in 1839. The £1250 cost was mainly funded by the Charlton family but £300 was raised from public subscription by the first priest, Fr Brown. It was opened and blessed by Bishop Briggs on 26 June 1839, but not consecrated until 10 May 1950. The church was built to the designs of Ignatius Bonomi, architect of Durham and is one of six Catholic churches attributed to him – the grandest being St Paulinus at Brough Park, North Yorkshire. He was a distant relative of the Charlton family and worked at Hesleyside in 1847.

The school (with its house, now St Oswald’s Cottage?) was opened in 1849, funded by Francis Charlton, the then county surveyor.

In 1869, Bonomi’s bellcote sited over the east gable was removed and the present larger west gable bellcote erected to the designs of A. M. Dunn. A report of an undated excursion to the area in the Northern Catholic History Magazine states ‘enlarged in 1869’ without further explanation or reference to Dunn’s work

In 1981 Fr James Costello reordered the sanctuary to designs by David Brown and the altar was consecrated by Bishop Lindsay on 26 January 1982.

Description

The church has a reversed geographical orientation but in this report conventional liturgical points are used. The high altar is therefore described as being at the east end, whereas it is geographically to the west.

The list entry (below) is brief, and does not describe the interior. It has confused orientations, misnames the memorial sculptor and needs to credit A. M. Dunn with the 1869 bellcote.

This simple rectangle building of coursed local stone roofed in blue slates is in the Early English or lancet Gothic style, of three bays externally but divided into six bays internally by the roof trusses. A southwest gabled porch contains a simple memorial tablet of 1841 signed G. Green Newcastle (not John Green as in Pevsner and the list description) and the arms of Pope Gregory XVI are over the door. Sacristies link to the large presbytery on the northeast corner.

The east and west facades are formed of three staggered lancets, with small glazed trefoils above the outer lancets lighting the roof space. The west end bellcote by A.M. Dunn is a very assured piece of 1869, corbelled out and rising to a high gable. The single bell was cast by Taylors of Loughborough. The south wall towards the road is blank, but the north wall has two paired lancet windows separated by a thin buttress.

Internally, the collar tie roof is plastered to form a three sided ceiling with an exposed purlin to each side. The trusses rise from painted stone corbels with stencilled decoration; bizarrely, two trusses rise from corbels in the thin wall separating the north side lancets.

The eastern lancets are linked with arches, probably of timber applied when the lower half of the central lancet of the east wall was infilled with plasterboard, presumably in 1981. The altar brought forward from the east wall has been widened so that the right half of the stone is new but well matched to the old (which must be later then 1839). The supporting marble shafts are re-used (they match the reredos) but the sides and back of the altar are of 1981. The scars of lost wall panelling suggest that these pews are not original and their style is late Victorian. The fourteen Stations ‘were erected September 9 MCM in memory of Rev. John George Flint by his faithful housekeeper Margaret Swallow’.

There are a number of modest Charlton memorial tablets, but the family members are mainly buried elsewhere. 

LIST DESCRIPTION:

II

Roman Catholic Church. 1839 by Ignatius Bonomi. Dressed stone and Welsh slate roof. Nave and chancel in one and east bellcote. 3 bays with, on south side, 2 sets of paired lancets under dripstones and a gabled porch with foliated cross finial. North wall is blank. East end has 3 stepped lancets under continuous dripstone, 2 trefoil windows above side lights and fanciful bellcote supported on moulded corbels; gable has a roundel with a pierced trefoil, crocketed pinnacles and a foliated cross finial. Monument by John Green in south porch. Plain interior.

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The medieval village of Longbenton was, as its name suggests, a long, two-row, settlement. A number of eighteenth and nineteenth stone houses survive surrounded by more recent housing estates. William Whellan’s 1855 Directory said that the parish contained ‘extensive collieries, foundries, quarries, gunpowder-works, &c. – upwards of 1,300 persons are employed in the collieries alone’.

The site of the church is near the centre of the medieval village, and on the south side of the street. The first church was a ‘tin hut’ (corrugated iron), built by 1916 to the immediate west of the present one. The present church was built in 1963 as a parish hall intended to serve a future church. Those hopes were unfulfilled and the ‘hall’ became the church. The sanctuary was redesigned by David Brown in 1978 and reordered in 1990 by Les Stringer (parish files) for the church’s consecration on 13 December 1990.

Description

The church is a function design of 1963, built as a parish hall. The walls are of stretcher bond brick, with artificial stone dressings; the low-pitched roof is covered in copper sheeting. Ritual east is to the south; ritual orientation is referred to in this description.

The church is entered from a recessed two-storey lobby which links hall and church. A plain west door leads to the church from the lobby. The long elevations have six bays, the outer ones blind, the six between them with large rectangular clerestory windows, those on the ritual north with wired glass. A small one-storey extension on the south side holds the sacristies. The exterior of the north and east walls is not accessible.

Inside, the interior is a single open space, with plaster, white painted surfaces. The flat ceiling rests on beams and solid brackets attached to flat wall posts. The wide sanctuary area is raised on one full-width step, with two apron steps to the altar, and two canted steps against the wall on which a crucifix hangs. All the liturgical furnishings are of white marble. A tabernacle stand at the left and ambo at the right have square bases and cornices; two smaller columns support the altar mensa. There are also square supports to the font, to the right on the lowest step. The presidential chair to the left of the altar is in similar style. There is a simple dado rail, interrupted by blank panels, probably intended as doors for the planned hall. Thick timber solid wood benches by Ormsby of Scarisbrick, with rail backs and solid ends, on either side of a central aisle.

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