Sacred Heart Church

This church was built around 1865 in Early English Gothic style, constructed of brick faced with coursed buff sandstone ashlar and covered with slate roofs. The architect is unknown but may have been William Butterfield or one of his pupils.

Plan and Structure

The church consists of a truncated west tower, south porch, nave with aisles and clerestorey, north and south chapels, and a square-ended sanctuary.

Exterior

The truncated west tower features a three-light mullioned window below a three-light window with intersecting tracery containing daggers and mouchettes. Paired weathered corner buttresses appear on all corners except the south-east, which contains a stair vice. The four westernmost buttresses have unusual deep statue niches with ogee-arched gables, flanked by unfinished projecting grotesques.

A gabled porch projects from the west bay of the south aisle, with a double-chamfered pointed arch resting on three plain shafts at each side. The capitals and hoodmould stops remain unfinished. The doorway is flanked by gabled buttresses with blind tracery, and the paired doors are filled with decorative iron scrollwork.

The four-bay nave has aisles with nailhead cornices and, between weathered buttresses, two-light geometric windows with drip mouldings. The clerestorey windows are single lancets. The aisles continue to form the north chapel and south organ loft (now also a chapel). The sanctuary sits lower than the nave, with a double nailhead cornice, north and south two-light windows with geometric tracery, a three-light east window with geometric tracery, and large paired weathered corner buttresses on the east wall.

Interior

The interior presents a striking effect of orange brick banded horizontally with black brick and buff ashlar, focusing attention towards the sanctuary. Sandstone double-chamfered pointed aisle arcades rest on quatrefoil columns with unfinished capitals. The clerestorey features blind lights flanking each window, creating the effect of an arcade. An open roof with king-post collar trusses spans the nave.

A double-chamfered chancel arch rises on corbelled truncated shafts with unfinished capitals, with a pair of blind roundels above. The raised chancel was later brought forward into the nave, leading to a sanctuary with north and south sedilia featuring pointed arches and black marble columns. A sumptuous painted and marble reredos spans the east wall, with the organ re-sited to replace the former central high altar.

The sanctuary walls continue the orange brick treatment but with more elaborate polychrome brick bands in chevron and checked patterns. Unusually, above the sedilia and reredos, an arcade is represented in black bricks. The ceiling is segmentally vaulted with later decoration.

At the west end, a partition has been inserted with a gallery in the first bay of the nave extending into the tower, creating a narthex and a day chapel below the west window.

Fittings

Plain pews and the re-sited organ are possibly original. A lectern, altar and priest's chair were added around 1986.

Stained Glass

The church contains exceptional stained glass by Morris and Company dating from between 1872 and 1875. The centrepiece is the three-light east window, principally designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The central light depicts a half-profile crucifixion, with Christ ministered by nine red-winged angels. The left and right lights each show four angels with coloured wings at Christ's head, while at his feet the left light contains Mary, Mary Magdalene and Mary, wife of Cleophas, and the right light shows Saint John, Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Above these three lights are two trefoil roundels and one quatrefoil, depicting eleven winged minstrels playing bells, a double pipe, a dulcimer, a harp, a portative organ, a bulbed pipe, and a violin—these last five figures designed by William Morris. An inscription across the foot of the windows reads, "Qui peccata nostra ipse pertulit in corpore suo super lignum" (who bore our sins in his body on the cross). This is thought to be the only window combining all of these designs.

The window in the north chancel wall shows Saint Mark and Saint Matthew, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown respectively, while that in the south wall depicts Saint Luke and Saint John, by William Morris and Ford Madox Brown. The easternmost window in the north aisle features William Morris designed figures of Ruth and Boaz, while that in the south has Saint Mary and Saint Joseph, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris respectively.

The main west window contains stained glass designed in 1987 by Paul Gannon of Whitley Bay. The three-light window in the day chapel below this is in dalle de verre depicting the "Risen Christ still with his people", by Vicki Pattisson.

Morris and Company existed in various incarnations between 1861 and 1898 as a design studio and decorating company, originally constituted as an artistic brotherhood with seven partners including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. The period saw widespread ritualist revival building on the gradual revival of stained glass making during the first half of the 19th century. Some of the firm's designs hold a pre-eminent place among the best Victorian windows and can be considered some of the finest stained glass produced in at least three hundred years, described as "one of the wonders of Victorian church art."

History

The church is unusual in having been built entirely at the expense of a private individual, remaining unconsecrated while serving part of an Anglican parish, then being bought for the Roman Catholic church with the private money of a Catholic Bishop. Originally named Saint Mary's, the building dates from the mid-1860s, with the first Curate serving from 1865. The patron was Thomas Eustace Smith, owner of Gosforth House and its estate and Liberal Member of Parliament for Tynemouth from 1868 to 1885. The church's establishment fulfilled the need expressed by the Vicar of Longbenton to serve the growing population of the north of his parish, and the ecclesiastical district of North Gosforth was established in May 1865, serving the colliery villages of Hazlerigg, Weetslade, Brunswick, Wideopen and Seaton Burn. Unfortunately, the church was felt not to be close enough to its congregations, and after the church of Saint Columba was built in Seaton Burn in 1870, services declined until the church closed in the early 20th century.

The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, Richard Collins, bought the church and said the first mass in January 1912, before formally opening and dedicating the church to the Sacred Heart in June 1912. On his death in 1924 the Bishop left money for the parish and for a presbytery, as well as donating pictures for the presbytery and church. The church was re-roofed in 1913 and 1934. Major internal re-ordering of the chancel and west end took place in 1986–1987 to accommodate the Roman Catholic New Liturgy developed following the Second Vatican Council.