Church Of St Ann

The Church of St Ann is a church built between 1709 and 1712, with a substantial restoration carried out between 1886 and 1891 by Alfred Waterhouse. It is constructed of sandstone ashlar with a hipped slate roof and is located on the south side of St Ann Street in Manchester.

The church is designed in a Classical style, comprising a nave with an east apse and a west tower. The two-storey, six-bay nave features coupled pilasters at both levels, the lower ones being fluted Corinthian and the upper ones plain. Each bay contains large round-headed windows with keystones, with a square-headed doorway in a large, pedimented, tetrastyle Corinthian doorcase with fluted columns in the westernmost bay. A pilastered parapet originally featured urns. The semi-circular, full-height apse has tall fluted Corinthian pilasters, a full entablature with carved emblems on the frieze, a prominent cornice, and tall round-headed windows with panelled aprons, moulded imposts and enriched keystones. The square west tower has four stages separated by string courses and a mid-height cornice. It incorporates rusticated clasping corner pilasters to the lower half, a Tuscan pilastered west doorway, round-headed lancets to the second stage, an oculus in a blank arch to the third stage (with clock-faces under segmental pediments on the north and south sides), and a belfry stage with coupled fluted Corinthian pilasters framing round-headed, three-light, louvred belfry windows with keystones. It is finished with a moulded cornice and balustraded parapet, originally surrounding a three-stage cupola.

The interior retains galleries on three sides, supported by stout Tuscan columns that replaced square pillars, with upper arcades on original slender Tuscan columns. Most furnishings date from the 19th-century restoration, including the choir in the nave, although fragments of the original pulpit and communion rail remain. Stained glass is by Frederick Shields.

The church is the second oldest in Manchester, built as part of the early 18th-century development of St Ann’s Square. It historically had strong Whig and Anti-Jacobite connections, and is notable as a location for sermons by John Wesley in 1733 and 1738, and for the baptism of Thomas De Quincey in 1785.