The cathedral church of the Diocese of Shrewsbury, built from designs by E. W. Pugin, under the patronage of the seventeenth Earl of Shrewsbury. This was Pugin’s first major commission, taken over from his late father A. W. N. Pugin at the age of just nineteen. The external appearance is relatively modest, its plan confined by site constraints; an intended tower and spire were never built. The cathedral has been augmented and enriched over the years, with additions by Edmund Kirby and fittings by E. W. Pugin, Hardman, Margaret Rope and others. The building has landmark quality within its immediate setting and when viewed from the River Severn, and with other cathedral buildings forms a good group in the Town Centre Conservation Area.

The first resident Catholic priest in Shrewsbury in modern times was the Rev. Francis Jakeman, who arrived in 1731. A chapel was built in Town Walls in 1776, on the initiative of Sir Edward Smythe of Acton Burnell. This was fifteen years before the building of public Catholic chapels became legal, and testifies to the toleration of the town, or the influence of Sir Edward, or both. However, the building was discreetly located behind the priest’s house, which in turn was set back from the road.

This chapel was enlarged in 1826 and provided with a gallery, to seat 250. ‘The discretion which had been in order when the chapel had first been established, before the abolition of penal restraints, was no longer necessary. Now the building of stone and stucco was fronted by a porch which overlooked the street. This was surmounted by a plain cross. The whole building was strictly classical in style with not a hint of the Gothic’ (J. Phillips, Shrewsbury: A Catholic Community, from Marmion, Millennium Essays etc, 2000, p.57). According to Phillips (p.58) the architect for these additions was John Carline (1761-1834), from the local family of architects, builders and sculptors.

This chapel was again extended in 1840, but it was clear that in due course a new and larger church would be needed. The main reason for the increase in the Catholic population was the arrival of Irish labourers for the building of the Great Western Railway, many of whom stayed. In the 1851 census the congregation was given as 700. The site of what is now the cathedral was purchased in the late 1840s by a hosier and carpenter, Mr Perks.

With the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, the Diocese of Shrewsbury was created in part in honour of the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, a great benefactor to the Church in England. However, there was not yet an existing building in the town of sufficient dignity and size to serve as a cathedral, and Pugin’s church of St Alban at Macclesfield became the pro-cathedral. Shrewsbury was not in all respects an obvious centre for the diocese, given the concentration of Catholics in its northern part, particularly on the Wirral. However, when he turned his mind to this, the Rt Revd James Brown (elected first Bishop of Shrewsbury in 1851), secured a site for a cathedral not in Shrewsbury or on the Wirral, but in Chester. This was next to the medieval St John’s church, and included a Georgian house which might serve as the bishop’s residence. He sought support for this proposal from A. W. N. Pugin, who demurred, out of deference to Lord Shrewsbury, who had already asked him to prepare designs for a cathedral at Shrewsbury. The earl wrote to the bishop, insisting that any thought of development at Chester should be set aside until the church at Shrewsbury (towards which construction he had offered to pay £15,000) had been completed.

In March 1852 Lord Shrewsbury wrote to A. W. N. Pugin: ‘Please God, we shall be laying the foundations about this time next year. I hope it stands upon a rock & will stand firm till the last day’ (quoted in Rosemary Hill’s biography of Pugin, p. 485). Pugin may have drafted initial designs, but by then he was descending into final stages of madness and he died in 1852 (as did the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury). The task passed to his son Edward Welby Pugin, and patronage to Bertram, seventeenth Earl, both then aged only nineteen. Pugin prepared designs for a cathedral in his father’s favoured Middle Pointed style, capable of seating 1,000. At the southwest corner a tower and spire of 227 feet was proposed. The expected cost was up to £10,000. The proposals found favour with the seventeenth Earl, except for Pugin’s designs for a rood screen, for which the Earl did not share his father’s (and Pugin’s) enthusiasm: ‘I think it greatly too heavy and will very much tend to prevent persons seeing the altar, a thing I much regret’ (Phillips, p.80). The idea was dropped.

The foundation stone was laid on 12 December 1853. Lord Shrewsbury chose the dedication, to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and St Peter of Alcantara, the latter a Spanish Franciscan from whose intercession he had benefitted. However, Pope Pius IX suggested a change of the first part of the dedication, to Our Lady Help of Christians.

E. W. Pugin prepared a design with a tower and spire but (ironically, in view of the sixteenth Earl’s prayer) this could not be realised, due to weak foundations. When it became apparent that the new church was not to have the cathedralesque qualities envisaged by its architect, the seventeenth Earl offered instead to fund a new cathedral at Birkenhead, and E. W. Pugin prepared ambitions plans for another church with a huge tower and spire. However, Rome was not happy with the prospect of locating the centres of two dioceses so close to one another across the Mersey, perhaps mindful of the tensions that had arisen between Westminster and Southwark. Pugin’s church of Our Lady at Birkenhead was not to become the cathedral, although it was completed (again minus its intended tower sand spire) in 1862.

The builders for Shrewsbury Cathedral were initially Pugin’s favoured firm, Myers of London, later replaced by a more local firm, Wullen of Wolverhampton. The cathedral was opened in October 1856, only a couple of months after the early death, at the age of 23, of Bertram Talbot, seventeenth Earl of Shrewsbury.

In 1868 Bishop Brown moved from Salter’s Hall, Newport to no. 11 Belmont, a Georgian house adjoining the cathedral.

The north aisle chapel (originally the Blessed Sacrament altar) was refitted as the Sacred Heart chapel in 1885, with a new altar by J. A. Pippett of Hardman & Co., as a memorial to Bishop Brown, who died in 1881. Pippett also carried out a lot of painted decoration in the cathedral, now largely lost or concealed.

The cathedral was consecrated in 1890. In the following year, the foundation stone was laid for a new school near the 1776 chapel, from designs by Edmund Kirby. Soon after this the old chapel was demolished. Kirby’s school was demolished in the 1980s.

The cathedral parish was divided in the post-war years, with separate parishes created in Harlescott and Monkmoor. In 1954 new Stations of the Cross by Philip Lindsey Clarke were installed as a memorial to Bishop Moriarty, the old Stations going to St Peter’s Wythenshawe. The cathedral was reordered in 1984 by Richard O’Mahony & Partners. A richly-carved stone pulpit donated by Canon Cholmondeley, stalls, altar rails, nave pews and a vestibule screen were all removed. New furnishings included a forward altar and ambo in Grinshill stone.

The beautiful polygonal south chapel (dedicated to St Winifred and now the Blessed Sacrament Chapel) was added by Edmund Kirby in 1901, at a cost of £2,000, donated by Mr and Mrs Florens Burke. Kirby also prepared plans for a polygonal baptistery extending to the northwest, but this was not built. South and west porches were added in 1906-07, again from designs by Kirby (builder Joseph Heyes). At the same time the inner narthex was raised to the level of the nave and the gallery above it extended.

In 2015 the entrance porch was adapted to make it safer and more accessible, with new blue-painted cast iron railings (Architect Andrew Arrol). This work was part-funded by a World War I centenary grant, which also allowed for the refurbishment of a war memorial plaque and the creation of a memorial chapel. 

In 2022 red marble and alabaster altar dating from 1896 was installed in the sanctuary (donated by Ely Cathedral, where it had been located in a side chapel). Along with the uncovering and restoration of Minton tiles in the sanctuary this formed part of a programme of improvements undertaken by Bishop Mark Davies, reversing the 1980s liturgical reordering.

Description

The list entry (see below) adequately describes the exterior, but is brief in its description of the interior. The west front faces roughly southeast but, as in the list description, liturgical compass points are here used.

Internally the church has a conventional plan, of nave with aisles and sanctuary with flanking chapels. The choir gallery is located above the principal entrance doors; a secondary entrance is available to the southwest, both contain flights of six stone steps. The sacristy and confessionals are located off the north wall, where there is also access to lavatories and the cathedral offices and presbytery. Access for the disabled is also from an entrance to the north. Interior stone dressings are Bath stone from Painswick, and the walls are plastered and plain painted. The open timber roof has gilt wrought iron ties and the floor is of polished pine parquet. Seating takes the form of modern moveable chairs. The hanging rood at the chancel arch dates from of 1885 and replaced a simple cross designed by E.W. Pugin. The sanctuary has a Minton tile floor (now restored to view having been carpeted in post-Vatican II reordering) and an alabaster and marble forward altar, introduced in 2022. The high altar, reredos and font are all original fittings of the 1860s by E.W. Pugin, made in Caen stone font by Lane & Lewis of Birmingham. The font was a gift of the widow of the Earl of Shrewsbury. It has an elaborate wrought iron and gilt cover by Hardman, and relief Caen marble panels to a marble columned base. It was moved from the baptistery, in the northwest corner of the Cathedral, to the front of the sanctuary in 1984. The low-relief stone Stations of the Cross were carved by Philip Lindsey Clark (1889-1977) and installed in 1954 as a memorial to Bishop Moriarty (d.1949).

The cathedral is rich in stained glass: the east window was donated by Canon Cholmondeley and is by Hardman (1862); many of the nave windows are also by Hardman, and the cathedral also contains an exquisite series of seven stained glass windows in translucent slab glass by the arts and crafts artist and nun Margaret Rope (1882-1953). The west window (1910) depicts the English Martyrs from the Romans to the Reformation and was Rope’s first major commission; other windows are the Visitation (1911), Baptism (1907), the Soldier Window (1917), St Laurence (1915), the Congress Window (1921), and St Ambrose (1934). Several of the replaced nineteenth century windows have been installed in Shrewsbury Convent School. An armorial window in the porch is by Trena M. Cox (1960).

Entry amended by AHP, January 2023. 

List descriptions

Cathedral

SHREWSBURY

SJ4912SW TOWN WALLS 653-1/15/683 (North side) 10/01/53 Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady Help of Christians and St Peter

GV II*

Roman Catholic cathedral. 1856. By Edward Welby Pugin, possibly to designs initially prepared by his father Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. Coursed and squared sandstone rubble with plain tiled roof. PLAN: nave and 2 aisles, chancel.

EXTERIOR: nave of 5-and-a-half bays with bellcote corbelled out over 5-light window in western gable. West porch with cusped moulded arched doorway and traceried windows in each side. Ornate canopy over statue on gable apex. Within, a deep moulded west doorway with short shafts. Lean-to aisles with eastern chapels with steeply pitched roofs. The bays are articulated by slim buttresses, and each bay has 3-light Decorated window with triple quatrefoils to clerestory. The easternmost bay is narrower. Porch and ante-room added to west of south aisle, with quatrefoil frieze to parapet, and gabled porch entrance with shouldered archway.

INTERIOR: nave arcade of 5-and-a-half bays with narrow eastern bay. Octagonal shafts in a very Early Gothic style, with steep pointed arches. Western gallery. Nave roof has wall posts which carry wrought-iron ties, and alternating cross-bracing and arched trusses. Deep moulding to steeply pointed chancel arch, with rood of 1885 hanging from the apex. Coved panelled ceiling to chancel. Gilded reredos with triangular arched traceried panels with figures in high relief. South aisle chapel with canted apsidal end, formed like a reliquary with marbled shafts to sedilia and to entrance arch, with heavily foliate capitals and cusped triangular arcading all around the walls. North aisle chapel has richly gilded and traceried altar. The chapels and chancel were decorated by J Pippet of Hardman and Co.

STAINED GLASS: very rich in stained glass, mostly in a medieval idiom: the large west window depicts the English Martyrs, while in the south aisle, various windows between 1898 and 1906. North aisle chapel has 2 windows by Margaret Rope showing scenes from the Lives of the Saints, dated 1917. Stained glass also in chancel and south aisle, largely c1911, some by Margaret Rope, the rest probably Hardman and Co. Chancel east window 1862 by Hardman. Low relief stone Stations of the Cross, 1952 by Philip Lindsey Clarke. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Shropshire: Harmondsworth: 1958-).

Listing NGR: SJ4915512228

Wall and lych gate adjoining

SHREWSBURY

SJ4912SW TOWN WALLS 653-1/15/682 (North West side) Length of wall with gate adjoining Roman Catholic Cathedral

GV II

Wall and gate. c1860. Coursed and squared sandstone with buttresses and raking copings. Small lych-gate with leaded bell-cast roof supported on timber struts and with cross finial on ridge. Included for group value.

Listing NGR: SJ4914412208

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In the years immediately before, during and after World War II Albrighton’s Catholic community worshipped at the RAF Chaplaincy at Cosford. From 1959 services were held in the village’s public library. In the early 1960s the Church of England sold a plot of glebe land on Bushfield Road to a Wolverhampton builder named Geoffrey Maclean. Donating part of the site to the local Catholic community, Maclean then built housing on the remaining ground. A dual-purpose wooden hall and church was opened in 1964 but this was destroyed by fire on Christmas Eve 1971. The present church was built from designs by Abbey Hanson Rowe of Shrewsbury and built by Macleans (small works). The church was officially opened on 1 November 1974.

The first major improvements to the church were undertaken in 1996 when its south end was extended to allow for the installation of a kitchen and the expansion of the welcome area. Further alterations in 2007 saw a disabled WC installed in this southern part of the building and a ramp built to permit wheelchair users to gain direct access to the body of the church from the car park. The church is served from Shifnal (qv).

Description

The church is of utilitarian form. The walling is of stretcher bond brickwork, the roof pitches laid with artificial slates and the full wall height windows plain glazed with sheet glass. The internal walls are of bare brick and within the main body of the church the plane of the pitched ceiling is punctuated by the wood of the rafter soffits and the insulation boards between. Along the spine of the interior runs a broad panelled downstand. Structurally and visually this element ties the entrance to the south with the brick built sanctuary bay. Externally, the impact of this spinal element has been diminished by the fact that the main roof pitches now rise to meet at a central ridge. The works to roof over the church’s spinal valley were undertaken c.2000; the valley had proved difficult to maintain and there had been problems with water ingress. Within the body of the church the tone of the architecture is reflected in the simplicity of the fittings. The altar is brick built with a cementitious mensa. The pews are of pine with open cast-iron ends, of Victorian character.

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The parish was formed in 1946 and a former nursery school converted as a church in 1954. A house was bought for use as a presbytery in 1961 and a new church built in the grounds in 1967-8, from designs by Reynolds & Scott.

Description

The church is typical of the cheaper hall churches built by Reynolds & Scott in the 1960s. It is concrete framed with clerestory windows and a pitched roof. It is clad in pale brown brick with small projections, a former baptistery and choir vestry, clad in stone. The frame is exposed inside and the space orientated with the altar on the long side. Bench seating is arranged on three sides of a forward altar on a low platform. The reredos is framed on two sides by narrow vertical window slits. It is of hardwood strips with a central panel with a crucifix. The canopy above is unusual; M-shaped with a spiky skeletal appearance in the manner of ribs. It is a design of some note in a building otherwise furnished in a very simple unostentatious manner.

Amended by AHP 07.02.2021

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Services were held in a variety of temporary locations until the church was built in 1953-5. The architect was F. X. Velarde and the contractors Tysons of Liverpool. Alsager became a parish a few years later in 1958.

Description

A very simple building of brick, with details such as the buttresses and the grouping of the round-arched lancets lending individuality. Window mullions are of moulded concrete with figures of saints, etc., but these are abraded. The interior is equally simple, with a pointed brick arch dividing the sanctuary from the nave. The altar front incorporates a carving of the Angel of Agony proffering a chalice and is identical to that at Velarde’s English Martyrs, Wallasey (q.v.) by Herbert Tyson Smith who must also have designed the crucifix and Stations of the Cross here. Simple bench seating is probably original. There is a suspended ceiling .

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Mass was said in private houses in Altrincham from 1847 and in the 1850s a pair of cottages was bought and converted. A school was later added. The facilities became inadequate to meet the needs of the Catholic population and were replaced in 1904-05 by the present church, designed by Edmund Kirby. A presbytery was completed a little later. Sanctuary furnishings of marble were installed in 1910 and a pulpit in 1911.The Lady Chapel altar followed in 1912. The sanctuary was reordered in 1985, when the floor level was raised and the furnishings reset. Other work undertaken at the same time included new floors, decoration and lighting.

Description

See also list description, below. Built in 1904-05 to the design of the noted Liverpool architect Edmund Kirby, the church is executed in red brick and red terracotta and in its design incorporates Early English and Decorated motifs as well as Continental Gothic forms. The west front displays raised brick decoration favoured by the architect. The plan consists of an aisled nave with clerestory, canted apse and short transepts. The west front incorporates a wide, heavily moulded entrance arch, tall lancets, flanking pinnacles and gable with vesica opening. Windows are generally lancets, the clerestory with pairs of lancets. The east end, which has Decorated style windows, is arranged in a picturesque manner, with counterpoint between the differing roof shapes and vertical elements. This end was apparently not finished as intended owing to lack of funds.  A modest red brick presbytery is attached.

The interior has arcades of alternating circular and octagonal columns of red sandstone, except the two in the sanctuary which are of polished granite. There is an ornate hammer beam roof over the nave. The two-bay transepts have confessionals. The high altar and reredos are ornately executed in alabaster and marble with carved scenes. The forward altar is a modification of the original high altar. The side altars also have ornate alabaster and marble altars and reredoses, as well as rails of alabaster with metalwork gates. Other similar furnishings include a pulpit and font. There is good stained glass, probably of early twentieth century date, in the sanctuary and chapels. The south chapel also has glass of mid-1960s date, in traditional style. At the west end is a pitch pine gallery with an open stair on the south side.

List description (church and presbytery)

II

Roman Catholic church, 1903-5, by Edmund Kirby of Liverpool, Ruabon brick with terracotta dressings, slate roof, Early English style, attached vernacular-style presbytery in same materials also by Kirby.  PLAN: Set on large triangular plot surrounded by gardens. Church aligned north-east – south-west. Nave and side aisles under separate roofs, polygonal apsidal chancel, transepts, porch to north-east (ritual west) end, presbytery attached to south corner.

EXTERIOR: Church: leaded and stained glass to all windows, stringcourses, and moulded brickwork, including door and window surrounds. Tripartite north-east (ritual west) elevation with gabled porch to centre surmounted by Cercelee cross finial, contains recessed main entrance set within scalloped-arched, moulded-brick surround, three steps lead up to plain panelled double doors with tympanum above incorporating cinquefoil flanked by small trefoils. Tall gabled nave above and behind with slender, part-corbelled and gableted-buttressed turrets surmounted by pinnacles. Slender lancets flank porch, three tall lancets (west window) above separated by narrower blind lancets form 7-bay arcade, relief quatrefoil frieze above, slender recessed elliptical light to gable apex. Side aisles lit by triple-light lancet windows to north-east ends with cusped heads and raised centre lights, rose window to south-west end of south aisle, octofoil window to south-west end of north aisle. Lancet windows arranged in groups of four and separated by low buttresses to each aisle’s side elevation. Clerestory lit by paired lancet windows. Two low transepts lit by triple-light lancet windows with raised centre lights, north transept also incorporates doorway to left return with tall arched surround and recessed segmental-headed panelled door. Chancel with hipped roof, lit by three large traceried windows (that to south-east end is wider), raised gables above side aisles containing triple-light lancet windows with cusped heads and raised centre lights. Low, enclosed ambulatory with tall chimneystack attached to south transept, wraps around to south-west rear of south side aisle to incorporate sacristy and links church to presbytery. Ambulatory lit by short, paired lancet windows, segmental-headed, panelled door incorporating two small, square leaded lights to south-west elevation.

Presbytery: two storeys, hipped roof, 6-over-1 sash windows with segmental arched heads to all elevations (those to ground floor are slightly taller), tall ridge and wall stacks. North-east elevation: two stringcourses between ground and first floor (lower stringcourse incorporates dentil band below) containing raised, diapered brickwork frieze set in diamond pattern. Diapering in similar style to left bay on both floors. Main entrance to ground floor right with Tudor-arched doorway containing recessed 9-panel door. Two windows to left of doorway, five windows to first floor above. South-east elevation: wide three bays, facing Bentinck Road. Stringcourses and diapered brickwork to ground floor and frieze in same style as that to north-east elevation. Single window to each floor of left bay, square bay window with hipped roof to ground floor centre right and paired windows above, similarly styled canted bay window to far right of ground floor with three windows above. South-west elevation: four bays, ground floor windows to bays 2 & 4, first floor windows to bays 1, 2 & 4, former stair window to bay 3, tall wall stack between bays 3 & 4. North-west rear elevation: eight bays. Doorways to each end of ground floor; that to left has Tudor-arched head and surround and six-panel door incorporating tripartite leaded light to top, that to right has segmental arched head in same style as windows with tripartite overlight. Windows to ground floor (one with a replaced casement insert) and bays 2, 4, 5 & 7 of first floor.

INTERIOR: Church: narthex with two marble piscinae flanking main entrance, later glazed panels and doors to south-west wall. Two original panelled side doors with leaded glazing to upper panels lead into main body of church. Corbelled hammerbeam roof covers nave and sanctuary, supported by full-height pink marble wall-shafts in sanctuary. Parquet floor. Arcaded side aisles incorporate alternating octagonal and circular piers of pink sandstone with Tuscan-style carved bases and capitals, plaster garlands to top part of nave side walls below clerestory windows. Probable later pews. Oak organ and choir gallery above narthex with panelled front incorporating pierced detailing, replaced organ of c1960s/70s, gallery accessed by stair in north side aisle with pierced geometric balustrade. Sanctuary set upon octagonal stepped platform with ornate marble altar (originally located in north side aisle’s chapel), altar rails removed. Top section of marble pulpit incorporating carved figurines of Sir Thomas More and John Fisher to left of altar, original pierced sections now infilled with marble, lower section now removed. Highly decorative marble reredos below south-west (ritual east) window. Further marble reredoses to side aisles’ south-west chapels (that to north aisle with later inserted panel to bottom centre), along with marble altar rails and decorative metal gates. Alabaster and marble font set in front of south side aisle’s chapel. Timber panelled confessionals to each transept with doors incorporating leaded glazing. Sacristy with built-in cupboards and doors leading into sanctuary, ambulatory and exterior. Ambulatory with later built-in cupboards and chimneybreast (fireplace removed).

Presbytery: stair hall to centre containing pitch-pine stair with thick, painted stick balusters and wide half-landing lit by a square skylight. Roll and plain moulded cornicing throughout, original 5-panel doors (some with later glazing inserted to top panel) and door architraves. Most original marble and timber fire surrounds survive. Later en-suite bathroom inserted to one first-floor bedroom. Some original quarry tiled flooring to rear service area, rear stair now removed and a toilet inserted into ground floor space with void above. Former housekeeper’s room now used as an office.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Entire site, including gardens and small parking area to north-west corner, enclosed by a low, pink sandstone wall (stepped in places) with square gate piers incorporating chevron and diagonal carvings and plain metal gates.

HISTORY: The parish of St Vincent’s in Altrincham was originally instituted in the mid-late C19 from a community of Irish immigrants who had come to escape the famine of 1845-52 and to work on the Manchester Ship Canal and farms in Cheshire. The Church of St Vincent de Paul and its presbytery were constructed in 1903-5 to the designs of Edmund Kirby of Liverpool at a cost of approximately £6000. The church was built to replace an earlier church on New Street, Altrincham and was opened on 1 October 1905 by the Bishop of Shrewsbury. It was designed to accommodate 500 people. The sanctuary was re-ordered, and the altar rails removed, approximately 20 years ago, and the organ was replaced in the c1960s/70s. The rear service accommodation in the presbytery was also altered in the 1970s/80s.

SOURCES: Parish of St Vincent de Paul. Parish History. Available on HTTP: http://www.stvincentsaltrincham.org.uk Accessed 19/7/10. N Pevsner & E Hubbard, The Buildings of England: Cheshire (2003), 60.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Church of St Vincent de Paul and Presbytery, constructed in 1903-5 to the designs of Edmund Kirby, are designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:* Architectural quality: together they form a well-detailed and imposing composition of an Early English-style church with an attached vernacular-style presbytery; the latter complementing rather than competing with the bold styling of the church * Architect: they were designed by the notable ecclesiastical architect, Edmund Kirby, a former pupil of E W Pugin, and incorporate key features of his work, such as extensive moulded brickwork * Intactness: both buildings are little altered overall and retain much of their original historic character and features * Interior quality: the well-proportioned and expansive church interior contains high quality features and fittings, including a corbelled hammerbeam roof, alternating circular and octagonal nave piers of pink sandstone, a panelled organ gallery, marble reredoses and altar, and an alabaster and marble font.

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Timperley House was bought in 1930 and used for worship and a new church built in 1931. The house was afterwards demolished and a presbytery built. The church, intended as a temporary structure, was eventually succeeded by a new building in 1981 designed by Anthony Bean of Brown, Smith & Baker. The old church was adapted to serve as a parish centre.

The church is a low building of brick with a low pyramidal roof supported by exposed steel framework. Simply arranged inside, with modern furnishings, there is an L-shaped window at the northeast end designed by the illustrator Doritie Kettlewell.

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A local hall was used for saying Mass from 1958. Plans for a new church by Edward Massey of 1961 were abandoned owing to high costs. In 1962 a site for a church hall was donated by local builders J. R. Ashall, who undertook the project (from Massey’s designs,  according  to  Plumb,  p.35). The hall opened in 1963 and the parish was formed in 1965. The interior was completely reordered in 1991.

The building is of frame construction with cladding and clerestory lighting. The interior and furnishings are decent and well appointed but without special interest.

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The church was opened in 1953 and served from Weaverham, where a new church by Reynolds & Scott was being completed concurrently. It may be that the same architects were used for the Barnton church. It claims to be the first church in England to be dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima. An extension with a parish hall and toilets was attached to the rear of the building in the late twentieth century.

The church is of brick with a pitched roof, simple detailing and flat-headed windows. The west entrance has a porch and is approached from a flight of steps. The added hall at the rear is equally simple. The interior is a single vessel with a slightly cambered ceiling and recessed sanctuary. There is some early twenty-first century stained glass by Michael Newton of Northwich Glass and simple bench seating.

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St Edmund’s orphanage, Heath Road, Bebington was opened in 1913, and placed under the care of the Sisters of the Holy Family, who were succeeded by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in 1920. For many years the number of children in residence was around 100, but by 1959 the numbers had declined, and in 1984, it was decided to close the institution. The chapel, which was situated at the top of the building, was used by the parish, and following its closure, it was decided to purchase the present house at 76 Church Road, Bebington. Mass was said in local schools and other premises.

In 1997, the garage of 76 Church Road was converted into an oratory, and more recently this was extended into a carport structure named ‘Our Lady’s Patio’. Weekday Mass is said at the house.

Description

The building is a standard semi-detached house of the 1930s, faced in pebbledash render, with a hipped tiled roof. To the side is a driveway leading to the former garage which was converted to an oratory in 1997. The oratory seats twenty-eight people, and contains a credence table, a lectern and a tabernacle. The garage doors open into ‘Our Lady’s Patio’, which serves as an overspill area and a gathering space. Another doorway opens into the garden which is equipped with a grotto, two gazebos, sheds and a rabbit hutch for the entertainment of children.

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The parish of Holy Cross was formed in 1928 with the increasing transfer of population from the central and docks areas of Birkenhead to the North End. Mass was first said in the Catholic chapel at Flaybrick Cemetery on the slopes of Bidston Hill. In 1929 a semi-permanent church was erected with use of voluntary labour, to be followed by a school in 1931.

In the 1950s, land on Hoylake Road, which had been set aside for a library, was acquired from the Town Council for a new church, and F. X. Velarde was appointed architect. The foundation stone was laid in October 1957, and the church opened in June 1959. In recent years the church has closed and the buildings and site have been offered for sale by the diocese. No solution for its future has yet emerged.

Description

Holy Cross is the last church to have been designed by Velarde and built in his lifetime (Our Lady of Pity at Harlescott, Shrewsbury, qv, was completed after his death), and is typical of his highly personal late style. It consists of a spacious narthex, flanked by an attached baptistery and tower, with nave and apsidal-ended sanctuary beneath a single pitched roof. Externally, each of the elements is individually expressed: the narthex as a cube clad in white Portland stone, bearing tall pinnacles; the campanile of brown brick with a stone-clad bell stage and green copper roof; and the baptistery a smaller white block with a conical-topped circular lantern. The curved brick walls of the sanctuary are echoed in the apsidal end of the chapel that projects from the south wall of the nave. The building is founded on piles bearing on bedrock, with load-bearing brick walls and a mix of reinforced concrete flat roofs and tiled pitched roofs supported on steel trusses.

The deeply recessed west doors open into the narthex, which is decorated in a grid of grey and white mosaic tesserae with gold quatrefoils and crosses. The ceiling has a diamond pattern that was originally painted yellow and navy blue (now white and gold). Aisles to each side lead to the tower and baptistery; in the latter black and red mosaics in a diagonal pattern with symbols of the Holy Trinity in gold mosaic line the walls. A wide round-arched opening leads into the nave which is flanked by an arcade on white and gold mosaic-faced columns without capitals. This continues as an ambulatory behind the sanctuary. The spandrels and lower part of the nave wall is clad in travertine, and the surface above is of fluted plaster. Natural light floods in from windows set high in the sanctuary and low in the aisles, which, reflected in the polished travertine, gives the interior a sense of serenity.  Originally fluorescent tubes were concealed behind the cornice line of the travertine cladding, and would have emphasised the fluting of the plaster linings to the nave walls above. The main floor is a grey vinyl tile, terrazzo for the sanctuary, and the nave ceiling is decorated with alternate squares in two shades of blue, separated by gilded mouldings.

On the north side of the sanctuary is a children’s room, separated by a glazed screen and a light metal grille. This is balanced on the south side by the choir and organ gallery. The sacristies radiate around the ambulatory beyond. An archway from the south side of the nave leads into the Lady Chapel, which is lined in intense blue tesserae as a background to mosaic figures of Our Lady and Child accompanied by angels, made by Carters of Poole. The high altar is of concrete, with built-in fittings for frontals, two of which were made by the nearby Lee Tapestry Works and are now in the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum. The lectern is of forged steel, which like the other metalwork in the church was made locally to Velarde’s design. The original pews remain. The Stations were incorporated from the old church. No reordering was carried out to conform to the Vatican II liturgy, apart from the removal of the steel altar rails. The font has been relocated to St Michael’s, Woodchurch.

List description

II

Roman Catholic church, 1957-9, designed by Francis X Velarde, brown brick and ashlar with plain tile roofs. Ritual east, used throughout, is compass south-west.

EXTERIOR: Large narthex or porch with attached north-west baptistry and south-west tower, nave and chancel under a single roof, nave with arcades and side aisles, chancel has curved apse and attached Lady Chapel. West front has gabled rectangular porch faced in ashlar accessed by a flight of six steps. Central doorway with double wooden doors flanked by 12-light windows with alternating round-headed and square-headed lights. The corners are topped with square pinnacles and plain cross finials. Set back to either side are linking corridors both with similar 12-light windows with alternating lights. The small rectangular baptistry has doorway with diamond-patterned door and a circular glass lantern above with a conical copper roof. Square tower with plain brick base and ashlar bell stage with five round-headed openings to each face, and a pyramidal copper roof. South side has aisle with four 20-light windows and beyond a projecting single storey Lady Chapel with apsidal end. Eastern end has ambulatory that continues the nave side aisles with pairs of boarded windows. Upper apse has five 15-light windows with alternating round headed and flat lights. North side has four 15-light windows with similar alternating lights.

INTERIOR: 7 bay nave arcades which continue around the eastern apse. The columns are clad in white mosaic tiling and the plain arches are clad in polished marble, above is a single continuous marble band and above the wall is fluted. The wooden roof is coffered and gilded. The nave has original wooden pews and the chancel raised up six steps has the stone font, moved from the baptistry, with a battered square base and simple shallow bowl topped with a wooden cover. The original stone altar stands up three further steps. Beyond the ambulatory metal screens and gates give access to parish rooms. The western porch has walls clad in large black and white squares made of mosaic tiles and decorated with gold crosses. The former baptistry has red and white squares set at the diagonal and made of mosaic tiles decorated with gold fish. The apsidal Lady Chapel has turquoise blue walls made of mosaic tiles with a gold diamond pattern and mosaic depicting the Virgin and Child surrounded by angels.

The last of Velarde’s churches built in his lifetime, and his personal favourite. It shows a distillation of Romanesque and modern motifs that is unique in his work; even at the end of his career he was still being inventive and seeking new expressions for his ideas on church design.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Church of the Holy Cross, erected between 1957-9 to the designs of Francis X Velarde, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architect: It was built to the designs of the distinguished church architect, Francis X Velarde, and is a good example of his work * Architectural Interest: It demonstrates a distillation of Romanesque and modern motifs that is unique to Velarde’s work, along with showing a spatial inventiveness.* Intactness: It is a largely unaltered, post-war Roman Catholic Church that retains its rich variety of materials and fittings, including highly decorative tiling, original wooden pews, stone font and altar.

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