Church Of St Matthew

The Church of St. Matthew is a parish church located on Summerhill Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. It was built in 1877, with the tower added in 1895 by Hicks and Charlewood. The church is constructed from coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings, and has a roof of plain tiles with stone gable copings.

The building consists of a tower, nave, choir, and sanctuary, with flanking double aisles, the outer ones being shorter. The tower is in the Decorated style, while the remainder of the church is in the Perpendicular style. The large, five-stage tower has a blank first stage, followed by a high five-light window with a sill string and hoodmould, smaller windows, and paired two-light belfry openings. Angle buttresses have offsets, leading to a battlemented parapet with crocketed side and corner pinnacles, and tall, two-stage open-traceried inner corner pinnacles with wind vanes. A west door in the north aisle has a two-centred moulded arch on shafts, with a similar door in the west end bay of the south aisle. An octagonal turret is located west of the south aisle, flanked by buttresses, and has a battlemented parapet. The main windows are square-headed three-light aisle windows and two-light clerestory windows, typically two to a bay defined by pilasters with pinnacles. Roll-moulded parapets and a cross finial adorn the exterior.

The interior features varied shades of red sandstone ashlar and a blind traceried frieze to an arch-braced roof with pendants and bosses. A high moulded tower arch stands on five shafts; lower, similar tower aisle arches are present. Quatrefoil piers support the four-bay nave arcade, featuring moulded arches and capitals (with delicate carved flowers on two easternmost and on the tower arch). Outer arcades consist of four double-chamfered arches springing from octagonal piers without capitals. The east wall has blind tracery and a wide splay of a six-light window, with a sedilia on the south sanctuary wall. A highly carved redos and chancel fittings, dating from 1896 and also by Hicks and Charlewood in memory of R.J. Johnson, include niches and canopied statues of Caen stone. The choir floor is of marble inlay, with a stone choir rail and wrought-iron gates commemorating the former vicar, Oliver Churchyard, who died in 1905. Glass in the south aisle commemorates benefactors, L.W. Pearson and his wife. Further glass by Kempe is found in the east windows. A font and cover in a 14th-century style were brought from the demolished St. Cuthbert's, Newcastle.