Church Heritage Record 625131

6-bay aisled nave and 2-bay chancel (the south aisle continues for two more bays along the south side of the chancel, forming a Lady chapel and organ chamber), small south-west porch, north-east vestry.

Nave 24.5m (75ft) by 8m (25ft).

Built 1856-9 to a design by John Dobson, replacing a chapel on Westgate Hill built in 1840. The church is strikingly similar in detail to the work at Stamfordham St Mary in County Durham, restored in 1848 and attributed to Benjamin Ferrey. Perhaps the fact that these major architects worked together on so many projects (for example the railway stations, where Dobson designed Newcastle and Green the minor local stations) at the time explains this cross-fertilisation

The church would appear to have been renovated in the 1950’s with new furnishings in the chancel, and the west end and the north-aisle were screened off in 1981 at the expense of Mr Leech, a local benefactor, to provide offices and meeting rooms for the parish.

A large Victorian Gothic church of surprisingly fresh and clean yellow sandstone. It is quite a grand and expensive urban church in what was at the time a prosperous middle class area, the church being considered highly fashionable and frequently full. The architectural style chosen is Transitional, with a mixture of pointed lancets and plate tracery, with a good deal of decorative detail employed. The church is long, with a lofty nave and additional vertical emphasis provided by the south-west pinnacle.

It is difficult to find a vantage point from which the whole church can be viewed. The west front for example is partly screened by young trees planted along this side. Rising above these, still by far the loftiest point in the immediate area, is the finely detailed octagonal south-west pinnacle, with a belfry stage of gabled slits and a stone spirelet above. Two buttresses climb up almost to the belfry stage.

The nave gable is treated simply, with two tall pointed lancets flanking a central buttress of two weatherings, which terminates just below a small rose window.  Angle buttresses mark the north aisle, which is pierced by a single cusped lancet.

The walls have a roll-moulded plinth, below a pair of lancets in each aisle bay with a continuous hood-mould and string course at cill level, divided by buttresses of the type described above and with a mask corbel table.  The narrow clearstorey has surprisingly short windows with pointed heads and plate tracery, the buttresses continued up as strip pilasters.  The gables all have good stone wheel cross finials.

The east wall of the chancel has a triple stepped lancet window under a continuous hood-mould, with a quatrefoil above.  The long vestry, now also used as a meeting hall and as a chapel, has paired lancets in each wall and a larger domestic window in the north and east walls.

The remarkably long south porch (long enough to have a pair of lancets in its side walls) provides a fitting entrance to the church, consisting of a pointed doorway arch with nook shafts and a hood-mould to floriate stops, flanked by stumpy clasping buttresses.  The plank double-door itself has elaborate scrolling iron fittings.  There is a cusped lancet in the gable, partly obscured by a rather garish yellow sign, matching the colour of the doors.

The porch gives access to the interior through an internal panelled lobby with a brattished cornice.  The interior of the church has been whitewashed above a boarded dado, the ashlar piers and arches and the cogging around the windows left exposed.  There is a stepped string-course around the walls. 

There is much stained glass, of varying periods and quality.  Most of the pews and original heating system with its plethora of pipes have been retained, the other furnishings are of varying periods although all Gothic in style.  The general impression is somewhat makeshift and cluttered, exacerbated by the rather arbitary division of parts of the church with white-painted hardboard.  Several areas of peeling plaster and damp ingress are immediately noticeable, all of which distracts from the architecture and potential space within.

The aisle arcades are carried by circular piers with bell-moulded bases and Perpendicular style capitals, the arches pointed and double chamfered. The opening off the south wall of the sanctuary to the organ chamber, now filled with pipes, and the doorway to the vestry have 4-centred arched heads.

The chancel has oak panelling around the walls, some of which is inscribed as a War Memorial. The east window lancets are set within deep recesses. There is a blocked lancet in the north wall, and a two-light lancet window in the south wall at clearstorey level, with an internal central shaft. 

The nave and chancel roof have delicately carved arch-braces, painted like the simple moulded corbels (matching the pier capitals) and wall-shafts in metallic grey, giving them a distinctly industrial appearance. By contrast, the lean-to aisle roofs appear rather makeshift, with thick plain diagonal struts to the piers. 

The steps up to the sanctuary are clad in red marble, the sanctuary itself has encaustic tiles in a geometric pattern (partly obscured by red carpet) contrasting with the stone flagging elsewhere.  The furnishings and fittings are unexceptional and of varying antiquity and style.