Church Heritage Record 613063

4-bay nave with aisles and transepts, crossing tower, north porch, 3-bay chancel with ambulatory, flanking vestry / organ chamber and south aisle chapel, east 3-bay retro-chapel of All Saints.

[Approximate] Nave 30m (100ft) x 8m (35ft), chancel 8m 25ft) long

St Chad’s was built in 1900-03, designed by William Searle Hicks of Hicks and Charlewood, who also oversaw the design of the earlier fittings, employing local firms, particularly Ralph Hedley’s of Newcastle and the Newcastle Handicrafts Company.  James Eadie-Reid (1868-1928) was the artist for the murals and panel paintings of the outer wings of the reredos (both since painted over), and the designer for many of the figurative panels in the woodwork, which were carved by James Taylor Ogleby. London-based Arts and Crafts specialists supplied many of the later fittings: Caroline Townshend (1878-1944) and Leonard Walker (1877-1964) for the stained glass; William Bainbridge-Reynolds (1855-1935) for the altar plate. Hicks died in 1902 before seeing St Chad’s dedicated.

The builder was Bewley’s of Dunston. The land was given by Lord Northbourne, but the money to build and furnish the church came from the very wealthy Emily Matilda Easton, whose portrait still hangs in the church. The church was furnished by a number of leading artists associated with the Arts-and-Crafts movement in the first decade of the century, invited by the first vicar, H C Windley. St Chad’s was the locus for a much wider circle of patronage, which included Walter de Lacey Willson (memorialised by Henry Payne’s south transept window at St Andrew’s, Roker and by a plaque in the church) and Bishop Arthur Thomas Lloyd of Newcastle, friend to Caroline Townshend’s uncle, the solicitor and Newcastle alderman Thomas George Gibson.

The church was built to serve the working class occupants of the housing estates around it, as a “cathedral for the workers”. A school, hall and institute were also provided, now gone, the social vision has remained. The curtilage on the south side houses the Family (Wellbeing) Centre and car park to serve it, and the west half of the church itself was converted in 1990 to house a family charity, St Chad’s Community Project, which was funded by the Church Urban Fund, Urban Programme and other charitable bodies as a response to Faith in the City.   This has since moved out to bigger premises nearby.

The church is a fine example of an archaeologically correct essay in the late 14th-century transition from Decorated to Perpendicular, and of triumphalist Anglo-Catholicism. There may be parallels with churches in Hick’s native Dorset and Sherborne Abbey in particular, but infused with the spirit of Arts-and-Crafts to avoid slavish copying to create something original, indeed this is Hicks’ late and last masterpiece.  The quality of the golden stone which is so characteristic of Tyneside, the excellent and obviously expensive ashlar work, tracery and other features, all this cannot fail to impress, contrasting strongly with the tough urban setting.

The elegant octagonal crossing tower is the most obvious example of this invention, rising from squinches and festooned with battlements and a corona of crocketed pinnacles and a narrow fleche with vane, but not overpowering. It has traceried openings to each face, two of them partly blocked by attractive blue and gold lozenge clock faces. The articulation of the other components and the massing is also masterly.  The building is unusually long because of the chapel of All Saints, set like a Medieval retro-chapel to the east of the chancel, and also the long chapel aisle and organ chamber / vestry flanking the chancel, but this length is balanced by the transepts and “pinned down” by the tower.  

As noted above the tracery in the pointed windows (the exception being the 2-light clearstorey windows in square frames) is a mixture of very flamboyant Late Decorated style and early Perpendicular.  The nave west end and chancel east wall have large 7-light windows, 5-lights to the transept end walls, 3-lights elsewhere. Bays have slender stepped buttresses, the corners with pinnacles.  The fine north porch has its own recessed sharply gabled roof, and an elaborate carved surround to the doorway with symbols of the Evangelists and a carved tympanum, and three niches above it with figures of St Chad (holding a model of Lichfield Cathedral), with St Aidan on his right, and Theodore of Canterbury on his left.

Moving inside through the porch, one enters a modern lobby, with toilets to one side - this is within the 1990 extension which occupies the western three bays of the nave and aisles. Stairs lead to a complex of upper rooms, suitable for meetings etc. Beyond this lobby on the ground floor is a large hall with well appointed kitchen on the south side. Double doors in the east wall lead into the worship area of the church.

The quality of the architecture and especially the furnishings and fittings is quite extraordinary – one can only imagine the effect if the walls had been covered with frescoes as planned. The slender continuous arcades and chancel arch capitals and the fine roofs, particularly the hammer-beam roof to the chancel, are of the highest quality. Behind the High Altar and over the arches to the ambulatory is a small but ornately carved singing loft, a unique feature for a Tyneside church.

It is however the woodwork, metalwork and stained glass which really impresses, particularly interesting the shift from the earliest stained glass by Percy Bacon in the chancel east window in a traditional style to the later more expressive glass by Walker and Townshend of a few years later. The woodcarving by the Newcastle-based workshop of Ralph Hedley (1848-1915) makes perhaps the greatest impact on the interior, in respect of the richly carved roofs and rood beam, screens, stall fronts, desks and reredos. The iron gates to the ambulatory, fine lamps, superb processional crosses and paschal candlestick by the Newcastle Handicrafts Company, all this could be a museum to Arts-and-Crafts in the North-East as well as contributing to a beautiful place of worship.

The remaining nave bay is pewed with good quality benches with plain ends, more elaborate oak choir stalls with poppyheads. Fine carved integrated Bishop’s chair and sedilia with elaborately carved canopies. Attractive marble floor in the sanctuary. The red carpet elsewhere and nave are considered necessary for modern use.