Corpus Christi Basilica

MANCHESTER

SJ8599 VARLEY STREET, Miles Platting 698-1/15/757 (North East side) Corpus Christi Basilica

II

Church. c.1906, by W.T.Gunson. Red brick with sandstone dressings, steeply-pitched slate roof. Italian Romanesque style. Nave with north and south aisles, chancel with apsidal sanctuary, south-west tower (incomplete). Large west front formed by gable of nave with tower to same height, with corner pilasters, string-courses, stone bands to the upper portion. The gable has a giant blank arch with moulded and banded head, containing a gabled portal with round-headed doorway which has a splayed reveal with triple shafts and banded head, and recessed double doors with traceried tympanum; a band of 6 tall round-headed lancets; and a semi-circular window filling the head of the arch, with a-stylar reticulated tracery and a statue in a projected canopied niche. the gable has another niche with a statue. To the right, the base of the tower has a projected apsidal baptistery which has a continuous arcade of round-headed windows with cushion-capital shafts, and a shallow semi-conical roof; and the 2 upper stages have pairs of round-headed lancets, the upper pair louvred. The right-hand side of the tower has a portal like that at the front but simpler. The 6-bay aisles have continuous blank-arcading at ground floor level, pilaster buttresses and pairs of round-headed lancets, and stone bracketed eaves; the nave has brick semi-columns with pedestals and carved stone capitals, and windows and eaves like the aisles; and the apse has a high-set arcade of small round-headed windows. Interior: aisle arcades of moulded round-headed arches on columns with large stone cushion capitals all elaborately carved in Romanesque style; very large round-headed chancel arch with coupled shafts; barrel-vaulted roof with simple semi-circular trusses.

Listing NGR: SJ8591399546