Church of St Ignatius

Church of St Ignatius

Parish church. 1887-9. Designed by C Hodgson Fowler and funded by Bishop Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham; the site was purchased with voluntary contributions from the people of Hendon. Built in Early English style with ashlar walls, a roof of graduated Lakeland slate with stone gable copings and a stone spire. The church was built to serve one of the most crowded areas of Sunderland at that time.

The plan comprises a chancel with a north vestry and meeting room and a south chapel, an aisled nave of five bays, and a southwest tower. The exterior features lancet windows throughout: three stepped lancets at the east end, three to the north and south of the chancel, paired lancets in the clerestory and aisles, with sill strings continuing around buttresses that define the bays except in the clerestory, and a dripstring to the west. The southwest tower is in four stages. Its south side has a double boarded door with elaborate hinges in a surround of three chamfers with ball-flower-stopped dripmould. Above this are paired lancets. On the west side is a polygonal stair turret with lancets and a stone roof, topped by two lancets above. A short blank third stage follows, then paired louvred belfry openings in an arcade with many shafts and blind narrow lancets under a dripstring, recessed between shallow pilasters rising from angle buttresses to a cusped corbel table. A high broach spire with louvred and gabled two-light lucarnes crowns the tower. The west elevation has a gabled left buttress, a vesica above three tall lancets, a WWI war memorial panel and cross in low relief under the coping below the central lancet, and a door and blocked overlight in the west end of the north aisle similar to the southwest tower door. The steeply pitched roofs, gabled to the south chancel chapel and pent on the aisles, have stone gable copings and cross finials.

The interior shows a five-bay nave arcade with double-chamfered arches on quatrefoil piers with clasping rings and moulded capitals, supported by a king post roof. The sanctuary contains a full-height richly carved reredos of 1901 made of Bath stone, featuring a crucifix and numerous statues including Old Testament prophets, apostles, and Northern saints. The reredos was a gift from Bishop Lightfoot; the models were made by Mr Floyce, a Frenchman, and executed by Roddis of Birmingham. The chancel arch is shafted, high and moulded, with an inner arch on corbels. The north chancel has an organ arch at the west and two blind arches. The south Lady Chapel features crocket capitals on a clustered pier and on corbels of two arches, with rich furnishings including an altar by Hicks of Hicks and Charlewood, and wrought-iron screens and communion rail. The five-bay nave has a door in a blocked northwest bay and an arch to the tower in the southwest. A plain wrought-iron pulpit stands on an ashlar plinth, positioned at Bishop Lightfoot's instruction.

The scheme of stained glass was drawn up by Reverend GF Brownie, Canon of St Paul's, London and Bishop of Bristol. It includes richly coloured pictures of Anglo-Saxon saints and kings in the aisles, with the east and west windows commemorating Bishop Lightfoot, the west window depicting scenes from his life. The foundation stone, dated 25 October 1887, is set in the southwest porch.