Roman Catholic Church of St Marie

St Marie's Roman Catholic Church, Lugsdale Road, Widnes

A Roman Catholic church designed in 1864 by Edward Welby Pugin, the foremost Catholic church architect of his generation. The building is constructed of red brick with sandstone dressings and blue brick banding, covered by a Welsh slate roof.

The church follows a linear single-cell plan with a nave and apse beneath a single roof structure, flanked by lean-to aisles with steeply pitched monopitch roofs that terminate just below the eaves line of the nave. The liturgical west front features three stepped lancets set above paired doorways with shouldered sandstone lintels, rising to a coped nave gable. At the gable apex stands an open bellcote with a cross finial, supported on corbelled stonework and miniature columns. The seven-bay aisles are divided by shallow stepped buttresses, with paired aisle lancets beneath hood moulds. The north aisle has a gabled doorway in the west end bay, featuring a wide moulded stone pointed arch with gable copings. Within the arch head is a mosaic tympanum bearing the inscription "I am the Immaculate Conception", added in 1931. Below the tympanum are paired doorways separated by a shallow stone column. The east end gables of the aisles incorporate large circular openings with hood moulds below cross finials. The canted sanctuary has paired lancets with trefoil heads to each facet, rising from a moulded string course.

The interior is spacious and lofty, with arched open roof trusses incorporating thin metal tie rods. The roof is underdrawn with wooden boarding, that of the apse featuring painted and stencilled decoration. Tall slender ashlar columns with plainly-shaped and painted capitals support tall pointed arcade arches, carrying the arched heads of lancet windows in both aisles and the apse. The west end contains a glazed entrance screen below a wide shallow arch which carries the galleried front to the organ loft. Wooden altars terminate the aisles, with original benches retained throughout the nave and aisles. The apse contains a richly decorated and inscribed alabaster reredos with painted scenes depicting the Nativity, the Annunciation (shown as separate illustrations of the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary), and the Assumption, set on gold backgrounds. These scenes are attributed to J.A. Pippet (1841-1903) of Hardman and Co, Birmingham. Below an elaborate canopy stands a richly-carved altar and benediction throne, with marble rails to the main altar and side altars.

St Marie's exemplifies Pugin's "industrial" church designs, intended to provide capacious and well-finished places of worship for rapidly expanding communities such as Widnes, where the chemicals industry provided employment for Irish immigrants among others. The construction was funded by congregation members. The church remains closely associated with the nearby St Gerard's School, formerly St Marie's Junior School, although the surrounding terraced housing has since been demolished. The building survives in almost complete condition with Pugin's interior design clearly readable throughout, retaining most of the original fixtures and fittings.