Church Of St Ann

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 28/02/2013

5150 SJ 68 NW 704-0/4/150 24.10.74

WINWICK ROAD Church of St Ann

II*

Former church. 1868-9, by John Douglas of Chester. Red brick in Flemish bond with some blue brick dressings, slate roof. High Victorian style with C13 Rhenish accent. Aisleless nave with north end and south porches, south-east tower, north vestry and apsidal chancel. The 6-bay nave, with stout buttresses, a plinth, a string-course of blue brick and a brick cornice with a nail-head band, has a gabled porch to the second bay of each side, both with broad battered clasping buttresses, a 2-centred arch chamfered in 3 orders containing a segmental-headed doorway, and a pair of small lancets in each side wall; and in most of the other bays a pair of lancet windows with roll-moulded surrounds. The south-east tower, which is the most striking feature of the design, is broad and square, clasped in the angle of the nave and chancel, and of 3 stages, with straight angle-buttresses to the south-east corner terminating with blue brick offsets at the belfry stage, and a south-west stair-turret treated as a broad clasping buttress terminating at the same level but finished with a tall conical-roofed turret rising above the parapet; a corbel table to the parapet, and a tall steeply-pitched saddle-back roof with a tiered break at its base. It has a small lancet to the 1st stage, an arcade of 3 similar windows to the 2nd stage, and coupled 2-centred arched belfry windows with chamfered surrounds and large wooden louvres. The tall semicircular apse, with buttresses to almost full height, has high 2-centred arched windows with 2 lancet lights and a circle in the head. Gabled vestry on north side, opposed to tower. INTERIOR: wide lofty nave with unusual internal buttresses between the windows spanned by 2-centred arches and carrying wall-posts to an arch-braced wagon roof with arcaded ashlaring and wind-braced purlins; blind arcading between these buttresses; chancel with slender shafts to elegantly rib-vaulted roof. Said to be heated by steam from adjoining brewery (now demolished). "An impressively forceful High Victorian piece, blunt and uncompromising" [Pevsner, BoE], effectively concentrating its principal features at the south-east corner from which it is first seen.

Listing NGR: SJ6054889042