Church of St Matthew is a Grade II listed building in the Sunderland local planning authority area, England. First listed on 15 July 1985. Church.

Church of St Matthew

WRENN ID
keen-jade-summer
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Sunderland
Constituency
Houghton and Sunderland South MP: Bridget Phillipson (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
15 July 1985
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Matthew, Front Street
OS grid reference
NZ 339 515
Coordinates
54.85777, -1.47222
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of St Matthew is a parish church built between 1885 and 1886 by the architects Oliver and Leeson from Newcastle, with a porch added in 1888. It is constructed from rock-faced sandstone and features a Welsh slate roof. The church is designed in the Early English style and consists of a nave with a south porch, north and south double transepts, and an apsed chancel. The four-bay nave includes groups of three lancet windows, while the transept gables and the three-bay chancel also feature paired lancets. The south porch has a cusped arch with a niche above it. The roofs are high-pitched, with flat stone coping at the east end of the nave. A small slate-covered fleche sits over the crossing, adorned with gablets over alternate louvres in the octagonal belfry, and there are stone cross-finials at the west end, an iron one at the east, and on the fleche.

Inside, the church is mostly plain, except for the west window, which serves as a First World War memorial. This window consists of three paired lancets depicting the Call of Matthew, the Transfiguration, and the Raising of the Widow's Son. Additionally, there are two stained glass windows in the north transept that were salvaged from the previous church on the site, which was built in 1850 and demolished to allow for the current structure.

Local climate

Church of St Matthew receives an average of 740 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 73% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 96% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 30 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 64% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

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