Church Heritage Record 613178

8 1/2- bay aisled nave, east sanctuary apse and south chapel apse, north-east organ chamber and vestry, west porches flanking baptistery. Detached campanile.

Nave c 24m x 9.5m

Southwick was originally a small hamlet which still boasted some Georgian houses until the redevelopment of the Post-war period. It developed into a suburb of Sunderland with ship-building yards and other industries in the late 19th century, the church was built to cater for the growing population. There was a large influx of Scottish and Irish workers and families, which may be reflected in the dedication and symbolic choice of Irish stone in the foundations, said to have come from or near St Columba's house.

The church was built in 1888-90, designed by Charles Hodgson Fowler with a grant from the ICBS. Hodgson Fowler was at this time an up and coming architect, soon to take up his post at Durham Cathedral. He designed many churches in the North-East and elsewhere during his long career, but this is a rare example of a Romanesque brick basilica from Hodgson Fowler, who generally preferred Early English designs.

It has similarities with the contemporary Roundhay St Aidan (Leeds) by R J Johnson which is however far more elaborate, and Blomfield's work at Gosport Holy Trinity; and more so Hodgson Fowler's and his sucessor W H Wood's church at Dawdon Colliery, St Hild & Helen, built 20 years later. Roman Catholic churches were of course often in this style taking their cue from Westminster Cathedral, and this could be interpreted as an expression of Hodgson Fowler's Anglo-Catholicism.

During the next two decades a scheme of decoration including murals and stained glass was commissioned from James Eadie-Ried, a Scottish Artist heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and completed by J Hampton. The mural in the west baptistry was added in 1952-3 by the local artist Leonard Evetts, and screens added to the aisles to define the chapels in 1960. The steel campanile was added in the 1970s by Charlewood & Curry.

Recent regeneration has centred around a new retirement village.

This is a very large and impressive basilica which tends towards the Italianate in feel rather than the Byzantine, with clear lines and restrained use of decoration. The building consists of a long aisled nave with protruding shallow apse, lower apse to the south chancel aisle, both with semi-dome roofs. Pilasters define the bays, there is a Lombard frieze around the gable eaves. The aisles have single lights under drip-moulds, the clearstorey with paired lights under a drip-string which continues around the west end and over the large west roundel. The windows have sloping sills and are recessed in plain surrounds.

The pent west porches have three windows flanking boarded doors under moulded lintels, and one window beside each door in central section, blank where the baptistery apse with semi-dome rises from the roof. Blind tall organ chamber in north transept and L-shaped lower north vestry adjacent, and plain gabled south porch. The adjacent school (now hall) has domestic rectangular windows to the side walls and a lunette in the west elevation above a gabled block set at across it adjoining the west porch.

The interior impresses through scale and design, but also because of its sumptuous and colourful decoration. The walls are whitewashed to backdrop to this, the arcade columns with cushion capitals of grey stone, plain but apparantly originally intended to be carved. Queen-post timber roof, painted green. The roofs of the aisles are panelled and painted red and white. The nave is fully pewed with long benches with squared moulded ends and panelled backs, the floor here is under red carpet.

The west baptistry has the Evetts mural behind the dark marble font, Christ within cross above the Agnus Dei and lanked by symbols of the Evangelists and two angels, the semi-dome painted blue. The organ is set in an arch on the north side of the nave in the eastern bay, the pipes rising up the wall. There are painted (blue) and gilded wrought-iron screens to the aisles, defining the chapels to St Aidan and the Virgin Mary in the eastern bays, the latter has chairs, the former good benches with squared ends and panelled backs, formerly choir stalls? Stained glass in many windows add colour, good leading and glazing to other windows.

At the east end the chancel arch is plain and round-headed, and around the apse within and continuing around the chancel arch walls giving the effect of a huge triptych are the richly coloured Eadie-Reid murals. This comprises groups of early British saints depicted by the Wear around the sanctuary apse beneath Christ in Majesty on the dome (the Mission to England). There are scenes from the New Testament in panels above a panelled dado along both aisles, and the Annunciation in the Lady Chapel in the south apse, forming a complete scheme complemented by the stained glass. Within the chancel there is a marble screen panelled in cream, green and red, and a marble and mosaic floor with circular patterns, also in the Lady Chapel.