Church Of St Luke

The Church of St Luke is a parish church built in 1874 by architect JP Pritchett, located on Merle Terrace in Sunderland. The building features thin, uneven courses of rubble with ashlar dressings and red sandstone nookshafts, topped with a roof of graduated stone slates and stone gable copings. It has a high chancel and a five-bay nave, along with a south aisle, a north porch, and a northeast tower.

The exterior is designed in a late 13th-century style, showcasing geometric tracery in the four-light east window and a three-light west window under a vesica. The northeast tower includes a north door, a two-light window on the second stage, and blind roundels in the short third stage. It has tall louvred belfry openings with crocket-capitalled shafts, and a parapet with corner blocks that replaced pinnacles removed in 1982 when the spire was taken down. The gabled north porch features a ball flower-stopped drip mould over a roll-moulded arch supported by water leaf capitalled nook shafts. The inner arch mirrors the style of the doors, which are fitted with tendril wrought-iron hinges.

Inside, the church has a high chancel arch resting on paired corbelled shafts. The south arcade is blind with block capitals on pilasters, while the north arcade has roll-moulded soffits and crocket capitals on round piers, all made of red sandstone, with the north arcade featuring high ogee-moulded bases. The scissor-braced roof is supported by moulded corbels and includes two levels of purlins and ashlar posts for the common rafters. A painted stone reredos displays four cusped arches on shafts. The octagonal stone font is adorned with crocket shafts and high relief panels depicting symbols of the evangelists on each side of the bowl. The pews are panelled with shaped ends.

The high-quality stained glass in the east window depicts Christ in Glory along with the Passion and Crucifixion, commemorating Martha Short, the wife of shipbuilder George Short, who died in 1893. The west window in the north aisle, created by Powell & Bros. of Leeds, commemorates George Short, who died in 1863, and features a medieval style showing Noah and the Ark, along with St Joseph the carpenter.