Church Heritage Record 604020

The church is economically planned with nave and chancel under a continuous roof covering six equal bays and narrower east and west bays; aisles run through on both north and south and there is a tall clearstorey. The western most bay has been screened off to create a hall and within this there is a kitchen in the south aisle and WC facilities in the south porch. A western vestry on the north side was demolished in 1985.

Nave and chancel together measure 124 ½ft by 25 ½ft; the aisles are each 9 ½ft wide.

The church was designed by Edward Paterson Peterson, a little known architect who had his office at 5 Charles Street, Bradford in the 1870s. This church was built in 1876-8 (foundation stone laid on 22 July 1876), and in 1879 Peterson designed St Peter’s Allerton.

The church shows in its design that it was originally hemmed in by buildings on all sides except the west. Indeed the east wall and aisle walls are entirely windowless and all windows are limited to the west gable and the north and south clearstorey. Like other churches of this type, St Mary Magdalene’s was intended as an Anglo-Catholic mission to a deprived area. Its style is simple Early English with some French details and the general impression is of a simplified Northern version of Butterfield’s St Alban’s Holborn or Woodyer’s St Augustine, Haggerston.

The proportions of the church are tall and spare, as is immediately evident from the west elevation. This is divided into three tiers by stringcourses. The lowest, flanked by the comparatively low aisles, is blind but has in the centre a shallow pilaster strip buttress with the foundation stone inscribed “In the faith of Jesus Christ, in honour / of St Mary Magdalene, and in pious memory of / William Wilson Harris this church / is erected by Public Subscription / the above W W Harris entered into / rest Nov. 18 1875 this stone is laid by his / son William Birkbeck Harris July 22 1876’. Above is a rood (of 1920), under a slated gablet with prettily carved barge-boards. At each side similar but lower pilaster-like buttresses divide the nave from the aisles.  The west walls of the aisles are pierced by doorways with two-centred moulded arches carried on paired shafts and above each is a quatrefoil in a roundel.

The middle stage of the west wall has two pairs of lancet lights which set the pattern for the clearstorey windows, to which they are linked by continuous moulded hoods turning into stringcourses. The centre pilaster buttress terminates at the level of the stringcourse between the pairs of lancets. Higher again there are four quatrefoils within roundels within a single large roundel. The gable continues up into a stone wall which forms the support for the western face of the small pyramid-roofed bell-cote with three wooden trefoiled louvred arches in each direction. The other three sides are carried on steeply pitched leaded slopes rising from the nave roof.

The flanking walls of the church are very plain. The aisles now have no windows or doors save for one door on the northern side. At the east end a small cross-gable marks the organ chamber. The clearstorey has six bays of uniform design, with two lancets in each bay and a pilaster strip marking the bays. The narrower east and west bays have a single lancet in each wall. The east wall of the church is completely featureless with the exception of a buttress in the centre and a chimney at the north-east angle. The eastern end of the south aisle projects a little past the east wall of the chancel, but the east end of the north aisle falls slightly short of it.

The interior is equally uniform in design. Entrance is by the north west door into a porch at the end of the aisle, since the porch at the west end of the south aisle has been converted into lavatories. Nave and chancel are taken as one long lofty space minus the western-most bay which was divided off to make a hall in 1988. Prior to fire damage in the 1950s there was a screen which divided the church two and a half bays from the east end. The western conversion to a community space is a successful one and uses vaulting and arches to achieve a sensitive design with timber cladding.

The floor is boarded under the pews and paved with wood blocks in the alleys, and the nave arcades opening into the relatively narrow aisles have double-chamfered arches in cylindrical pillars with moulded bases and capitals. In the spandrels are corbels bearing shafts which rise to carry the arch-braced principals with turned queen-posts above. The sills of the clearstorey windows are linked by a moulded stringcourse, and at this level the rood beam survives to show the position of the former screen.

Beyond it the floor begins to rise with two steps (the high altar is nine steps above the nave floor level) and the spandrels of the arcades are plastered. The walls of the clearstorey in the chancel are unplastered but have been whitened. The southern aisle ends in a small clergy vestry and the east bay of the north aisle houses the organ. The east wall is panelled with marble each side of the reredos, and above a stone cornice carved with stiff-leaf are three blind arches carried on shafts, the middle one much larger than the small flanking pair, echoing the proportions of the nave/chancel to the aisles. These arches are painted with Our Lord in Judgement surrounded by angels and saints. The stone faced wall above is again whitened.

The sanctuary is paved with red tiles and the footpace is edged with marble and inlaid with circles of marble. In the south wall is a triple arch for the sedilia, the arches trefoiled and the shafts with moulded bases and capitals. There is also a stone piscina with a small corbel above it. A modern altar has been placed in the western part of the chancel, the screen and choirstalls having been removed to create a large open space. The chancel is separated from the north and south aisles by low stone walls.