Corpus Christi Basilica

Corpus Christi Basilica is a church built around 1906 by W.T. Gunson, located on Varley Street in Miles Platting, Manchester. It is constructed of red brick with sandstone dressings and features a steeply-pitched slate roof, designed in the Italian Romanesque style. The building includes a nave flanked by north and south aisles, a chancel with an apsidal sanctuary, and an incomplete south-west tower.

The large west front is dominated by the gable of the nave, which is at the same height as the tower. This front features corner pilasters, string courses, and stone bands at the upper section. A giant blank arch with a moulded and banded head is present, containing a gabled portal with a round-headed doorway that has a splayed reveal, triple shafts, and a banded head. The portal is flanked by recessed double doors topped with a traceried tympanum. Below the arch, there is a band of six tall round-headed lancets and a semi-circular window with a-stylar reticulated tracery, which houses a statue in a projected canopied niche. Another niche with a statue is located in the gable.

To the right of the gable, the base of the tower features a projected apsidal baptistery, which has a continuous arcade of round-headed windows supported by cushion-capital shafts and topped with a shallow semi-conical roof. The two upper stages of the tower contain pairs of round-headed lancets, with the upper pair being louvred. The right-hand side of the tower includes a simpler portal similar to the one at the front.

The six-bay aisles are characterized by continuous blank arcading at ground floor level, pilaster buttresses, and pairs of round-headed lancets, along with stone bracketed eaves. The nave features brick semi-columns with pedestals and elaborately carved stone capitals, with windows and eaves that match those of the aisles. The apse is adorned with a high-set arcade of small round-headed windows.

Inside, the church boasts aisle arcades with moulded round-headed arches supported by columns featuring large stone cushion capitals, all intricately carved in the Romanesque style. The chancel arch is very large and round-headed, with coupled shafts, and the roof is barrel-vaulted with simple semi-circular trusses.