Church of the Holy Innocents and St James is a Grade II listed building in the Manchester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 3 October 1974. Church.
Church of the Holy Innocents and St James
- WRENN ID
- heavy-entrance-larch
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Manchester
- Constituency
- Manchester Rusholme MP: Afzal Khan (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 3 October 1974
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of the Holy Innocents and St James, Wilbraham Road
- OS grid reference
- SJ 855 940
- Coordinates
- 53.44297, -2.21963
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of the Holy Innocents and St James is a church built between 1870 and 1872 by architects Price and Linklater. It is constructed from coursed yellow sandstone rubble with red sandstone dressings and features a steeply-pitched slate roof adorned with a diaper pattern of green slates. The church is designed in the Gothic style reminiscent of around 1200, with all openings featuring 2-centred arches and cusped heads.
The layout includes a nave with north and south aisles, a south-west porch, a south-east steeple, and an apsidal-ended chancel that has a south chapel and a north vestry. The free-standing square tower consists of four stages, with angle buttresses, corner pinnacles, and an octagonal spire that includes lucarnes. The south doorway of the tower features set-in shafts and a moulded head decorated with ball-flower ornament. The second stage has a 2-light window, the third stage displays circular clock faces, and the top stage has coupled 2-light belfry windows along with corbel-tables.
The five-bay aisles are supported by buttresses and have 2-light windows with quatrefoils in their heads. The gabled porch on the south aisle features a doorway with a double-chamfered surround and set-in shafts. The nave includes a clerestory with two single-light windows in each bay and a tripartite west window set within a blank arch, which has a transomed 3-stage 2-light center and 2-stage side lights. The three-bay chancel, which has a buttressed apse, features 2-light windows with multifoils in their heads, topped by linked crocketed gablets. The parallel two-bay south chapel is designed in a similar style. The interior has not been inspected. The church forms a group with the former school to the east, which is now the Queen of Hearts Public House.
Local climate
Church of the Holy Innocents and St James sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 73% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 41 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 79% of listed buildings. Of these, 22 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.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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