Church Heritage Record 622115

Nave, narrow aisles and chancel, west gallery, west end facilities.

The nave is approximately 32m (105ft) x 14m (45ft) (including the aisles). The chancel is approximately 7m (23ft) x 4m. (13ft)

St Aidan’s was a gift from Charles Albert Gladstone as a monument to his great grandfather, Sir John Gladstone who had himself been responsible for three churches in the Diocese. Despite planning beginning before the outbreak of the Second World War the church was not built until 1956 to designs by local architect Bernard Miller. The building was repaired between 1985 and 1990 and won a Civic Design Award for the work. During these works the west end was partitioned to create a large vestibule with toilets and a kitchen.

St Aidan’s is a large red brick building on a central island site although sadly lacking a clear entrance. The nave has seven bays and is wide and tall with a copper roof curving in a barrel-vault. The aisles are shallow and almost equal in height with continuous clerestorey style windows with the copper roof undulating over each one. Below this the walls are totally blind.

The chancel is approximately half the height and width of the nave with the same vaulted copper roof. The east wall of the nave proper has the outline of five blind lancets slightly marked with a brick hood.

The chancel is flanked by lower flat roofed vestries which each have a band of small rectangular windows in the north and south walls and two separate openings to the east. The chancel itself has three clerestorey windows on either side each with three lights under a segmental arch. The main east window is tall, thin and rectangular with barely a hint of an arch to the top

The aisles occupy the central five bays of the nave. On the north elevation the aisles drop to low flat roofs for the easternmost bay with a large rose window in the nave wall above. This arrangement is mimicked at the westernmost bay of the nave on the north and south side.

The easternmost bay of the south elevation is taken up with the tower and spire which is clearly the culmination of the building.  Standing squarely at the corner of the nave it is plain and unadorned until it reaches the height of the roof; from here the structure attempts a more delicate result. The lantern has large belfry openings between square buttresses to the cardinal points (forming a cross in plan) with arched weatherings joining at a needle spire sheathed in copper.  The lattice frame of the belfry openings gives a hollow and light contrast to the squat tower but it is the needle spire which creates a surprisingly elegant apex.

At the west end of the nave the building has a section (which contains the stairway to the gallery internally) projecting with a slightly lower vaulted roof than the nave. The fenestration on the west wall is five tall thin rectangular lancets. There are two flat roofed porches to the north and south and the main entrance is via the north one.

The porch leads to a central vestibule with a wide curving stairway to the gallery against the west wall. The font still stands somewhat incongruously in the vestibule which was separated from the nave in the 1980s with glazed screens which are etched with depictions of St Aidan, the Venerable Bede, St Cuthbert and St Oswald.

The nave is majestic and vast in scale although surprisingly well lit from the lofty clerestorey windows. Each window is divided into five lights and the central one of each has stained glass. The ceiling is vaulted and finished with an unusual lamella pattern and now painted in a distinctive ochre colour. The colour scheme is otherwise a fairly drab cream with a dark grey.

The aisles are very shallow, only perhaps a metre in width. The arcading is simple rectangular columns reaching to roof height and linked with a segmental arch at the very top. The easternmost bay of the nave has a dais as a large central platform raised on three steps with a dominant altar. On either side of the dais the aisle arcade changes to become a blind wall with two low segmental arches on either side looking through to the narrow aisle walkway, now with lowered roof, which becomes an ambulatory. Similar low arches link the ambulatory to the arcades from east to west.  On the north side, high in the wall, is a rose window and in the north wall of the walkway below there are three small openings providing valuable light.

The chancel arch is segmental in style and reaches to the roof height of the sunken chancel (also known as St Thomas’ chapel), approximately half the height of the nave, and has a deep red, green and gold banded decoration as seen on the gallery. On either side of this arch are lower arches as doorways through to the ambulatory which continues around the central altar space across the back (east) of the raised dais.