Roman Catholic Church Of St Francis And Monastic Building Attached To Church

MANCHESTER

SJ89NE GORTON LANE, Gorton North 698-1/5/694 (North side) 18/12/63 Roman Catholic Church of St Francis and monastic building attached to church (Formerly Listed as: GORTON LANE, Gorton (North side) Roman Catholic Church of St Francis, Monastic building attached to Church)

II*

Roman Catholic church, with attached monastic building. 1864-72, by Edward Welby Pugin, for the Order of St Francis. CHURCH: Red brick with dressings of sandstone and blue brick, steeply-pitched slate roof. Late C13 Gothic style. Nave on north-south axis with east and west aisles, south narthex, and north chancel with polygonal apse. The 13-bay nave and 2-bay chancel with its apse form a single tall narrow vessel, the nave having buttresses which form 13 very narrow bays with corbel tables, the buttresses banded, and each bay containing a 2-light window with a multifoil in the head; the chancel has larger but similar windows and unusual coupled dormers with multifoils; and the apse has 3-light traceried windows with multifoils in the head. The aisles have buttresses and 3 or 4 lancets to each bay. By contrast with this simple regularity, the gabled south front makes a very elaborate demonstration of Gothic features and decoration with strong vertical emphasis: 3 flying buttresses to the full height of the nave, with polychrome bands and 4 diminishing stone offsets to each, the outer finished with gablets and corniced octagonal shafts, and the centre carried up to a large stepped-out and canopied Crucifixus attached to the front of a stepped pedestal from which rises a banded and pilastered bellcote with a spirelet. The bases of the buttresses are pierced by a 4-bay narthex which has 2-centred arched moulded stone doorways linked by an impost band carried round the buttresses, and a pierced stone parapet with a pierced gablet breaking through. Above the narthex, the nave has 2 very tall elaborately moulded 2-light windows with geometrical tracery and banded extradoses, deeply-raked stone sills and hoodmoulds from which rise pedestals to canopied statues; and the aisles have short 2-centred moulded stone arches each containing 4 small multifoils. MONASTIC BUILDING: cloister attached to east side of church, and returned along front of very plain 3-storey range on north side of garden, which has small widely-spaced segmental-headed sashed windows to the 1st and 2nd floors, ridge chimneys, and a bellcote at the west gable. Unocuppied at time of survey.

Listing NGR: SJ8766296872