Church of St Paul

Church of St Paul, Alnwick

Built in 1845-46 to designs by the distinguished Gothic Revival architect Anthony Salvin, the Church of St Paul stands on Percy Street in an area of early 19th-century housing, set within an attractive churchyard fringed with trees. The building was constructed at a cost of approximately £12,000, funded mainly by the third Duke of Northumberland to serve the growing residential district. Salvin, born in Worthing in 1799 and trained under John Paterson and in the office of John Nash, established independent practice in 1828 and became renowned for his ability to create buildings in an authentically medieval style. He later worked extensively on Alnwick Castle for the fourth Duke of Northumberland between 1854 and 1860.

The church is constructed of squared stone rubble with slate roofs. The exterior, plain and substantial, demonstrates a simple but archaeologically correct interpretation of Decorated style. The dominant feature is a large and tall west tower, as wide as the nave, comprising four stages with diagonal buttresses. The tower features a 14th-century-style west doorway of three chamfered orders with a two-light window above it. The third stage is exceptionally tall with paired windows, and the upper stage contains large Decorated-style bell openings, topped by a blocky embattled parapet. The aisles are lit by two-light windows with flowing tracery, separated by buttresses. The south porch has an outer doorway with a moulded arch on grouped shafts, flanked by cinquefoil-headed niches and trefoiled lancets in the side walls. Inside the porch is an ambitious stone vault with foliate bosses on head corbels.

The plan comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a chancel with north and south chapels and a south vestry. The nave, aisle and chancel roofs are steeply pitched without parapets, while uniform two-light clerestory windows run along the nave. The chancel has diagonal buttresses and mostly paired lancet windows, with a five-light east window featuring curvilinear tracery of good archaeological precedent. Above this, in the chancel east gable, sits a circular window with swirling tracery. The north chapel is shorter than the chancel, with paired lights in the north wall and a two-light east window. The south vestry and chapel are distinguished by a cross-gable on the vestry.

The interior maintains the Decorated style throughout. The five-bay north and south arcades are uniform, featuring quatrefoil clustered piers with double-chamfered arches; the chancel arch is executed in a similar style. A tall tower arch rises above, and both north and south chancel chapels have arches to the aisles, with the chapels opening to the chancel through arches bearing labels with head stops on the inner faces. The nave windows have very deep, almost straight-sided reveals. The nave contains a timber vault resting on short colonettes springing from head corbels, which was inserted around 1865. The aisle roofs are boarded with curved braces, while the chancel roof is panelled with closely-spaced arch braces on corbel heads.

The church contains exceptional fixtures and fittings. The east window, depicting St Paul and St Barnabas preaching, dates to 1856 and was inserted as a memorial to the third Duke of Northumberland. It was designed by the renowned artist William Dyce (1806-1864), who executed the cartoons for the historical wall paintings in the Houses of Parliament and the decoration on the east wall of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, and was executed in Munich by Ainmüller. The window cost £1,639 5 shillings, with £816 2 shillings and 1 penny raised by public subscription and the remainder funded by the fourth Duke of Northumberland. An octagonal stone font dating to 1846 features cusped tracery on the bowl and ball flower on the lower edge. The timber altar of 1846 has timber arcading along its front, and a reredos with gothic-style sanctuary panelling incorporating blind ogee arches dates to 1859. An octagonal oak pulpit with traceried panels, probably also from 1846, stands in the church, alongside choir stalls with poppyheads and open traceried fronts, and altar rails with trefoil arcading. The Lady Chapel contains a reredos and stations of the cross brought to the church following its conversion. A monument to the third Duke of Northumberland, who died in 1847, was executed by J.E. Carew and depicts the aristocrat asleep in his coronet, though he is buried elsewhere. Further refurbishment of the chancel occurred in memory of Edward Bryan, the curate, who drowned while bathing at Alnmouth in 1859.

The church became redundant in 1979 and was subsequently converted to Roman Catholic use, with some re-ordering undertaken in recent times.