Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and attached boundary walls, Blackley

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and attached boundary walls, Blackley

The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was built between 1906 and 1908 to designs by J Bernard Holt of Manchester. It is executed in the Perpendicular Gothic style, constructed of red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs.

The church occupies a triangular corner site with its west end at the apex. It is built of red brick in English garden wall bond with moulded brick and stone dressings. The plan comprises a sanctuary facing south (though liturgical compass points are used for description), a nave with narrow south aisle, wider north aisle, south-west corner tower, Lady Chapel at the east end, confessionals and angled porch at the west end, plus a narthex and west gallery, and a projecting central former baptistery flanked by angled porches. A doorway in the east wall of the south aisle provides access to the sacristies and presbytery.

The gabled west end has a moulded stone coping with an embellished cross at the apex. A large seven-light arched window with Perpendicular tracery is flanked by slender brick buttresses with stone caps. At the gable apex stands a statue niche containing Our Lady and the baby Christ. Below is a projecting single-storey baptistery with plinth and lean-to roof, containing two two-light traceried windows separated by a shallow buttress. Two slightly recessed angled porches flank the baptistery, with parapets and flat roofs; each has a doorway with moulded brick hoodmould and stone door frame with arched multi-panelled timber door. A slender square tower rises on the right-hand side of the gable wall, crowned by a tall battlemented octagonal turret with alternating shallow buttresses and narrow traceried lancet apertures.

The south elevation features the tower and turret at its left-hand end. Beyond rises a tall clerestory with battlements and six large arched windows of three lights with Perpendicular tracery, the bays separated by shallow buttresses. Below is a shallow aisle set on a raised basement due to the fall of the land, with lean-to roof and six small traceried lancets with brick hoodmoulds and a brick string beneath stone sills. At the right-hand end, the two-bay sanctuary is set back with a lower roof and arched two-light traceried windows separated by a shallow buttress. In front and wrapping around the east end of the sanctuary is a four-bay sacristy building, also set on a raised basement. The basement contains a blocked two-light window with stone sill, lintel and mullion, and a wide doorway with stone lintel. Above are four two-light windows with stone sills, lintels and mullions and leaded small-pane glazing. The brick string of the south aisle steps down and continues beneath these window sills.

The north elevation has a similar tall clerestory with battlements and six large arched windows of three lights with Perpendicular tracery, the bays separated by shallow buttresses, with a blind arched window at the right-hand end. In front of the first to fourth bays is an aisle with double-pitched roof containing four square-headed windows with two-light traceried windows and hoodmoulds, the bays separated by shallow buttresses. At the left-hand end is a slightly recessed apsidal Lady Chapel with green copper roof and a similar square-headed two-light traceried window. A low angled flat-roofed building with parapet sits between the Lady Chapel and the north-east outer corner of the sanctuary. At the right-hand end is a low angled flat-roofed porch with parapet, containing a doorway with moulded brick hoodmould and stone door frame with arched multi-panelled timber door, plus four square-headed single-light traceried windows with brick string below the sills and above the lintels.

The interior has a seven-bay nave and two-bay sanctuary with panelled wagon roof ceilings with trusses in the approximate form of hammer-beam trusses. The walls are articulated by giant arches which rise through the arcades and continue round the large clerestory windows. The arcades are faced with grey marble above the arches, with mosaic roundels of saints in the spandrels. The east wall of the nave is faced in grey marble up to impost level of the sanctuary arch. The arch is outlined in gold mosaic and flanked by arched mosaic scenes of St Joachim to the left and St Anne to the right, above traceried niches with marble statues of Our Lady and the baby Christ and the Sacred Heart. The sanctuary has marble steps and floor relating to the 1965 reordering. The inner walls have blind arcading with mosaic spandrels continuing round a reredos with marble bas-relief scenes of the Sacred Heart and the Assumption, with a central canopied niche containing a painted Crucifixion over the tabernacle and altar, and flanking marble statues of saints. The marble altar has bas-relief panels with three gilded shields. The east stained-glass window is by the Hardman firm in memory of Fr Hayes, who died in 1926. A forward-placed marble altar and lectern relate to the 1965 reordering.

The nave has a west narthex and gallery; the glazed timber screen and panelled gallery front relate to the 1965 reordering. An organ with gilded pipes sits on the gallery. The two west porches have arched inner doorways with double doors with vertical panels and glazed upper lights, flanking two arches opening into the gallery steps and the former baptistery, which is enclosed by a decorative iron gate.

The north aisle has a panelled wagon roof ceiling. At the east end is the Lady Chapel with a bay of double-pitched ceiling and apse lined in gold mosaic with a starry sky and dove. The marble altar has a central niche with a stylised Virgin. At the west end are confessionals, and the aisle contains a marble plaque war memorial commemorating those who fell in both World Wars with a large painted Pieta in front dated 1912.

The narrow south aisle has arched trusses and an arched doorway into the sacristy at the east end.

The boundary walls form part of the listing. At the west apex of the triangular site is a red brick boundary wall with chamfered stone coping and rectangular brick piers with shaped stone caps. A gateway on the Old Road side is flanked by taller gate piers with a decorative wrought-iron gate. On Old Road a triangular garden in front of the north aisle is bounded by a similar red brick wall with chamfered stone coping and rectangular brick piers with shaped stone caps, with a similar gateway flanked by taller gate piers and decorative wrought-iron gate towards the right-hand end.

The presbytery, and the modern parapetted entrance and flat-roofed extension linking the presbytery to the sacristies, are declared not to be of special architectural or historic interest.