Former Church Of All Souls

The former Church of All Souls was built between 1839 and 1840 and designed by William Haley. Constructed of brown brick with stone dressings and a slate roof, it is located on Every Street, in the Beswick and Clayton area of Manchester. The church is Romanesque in style, with a rectangular plan oriented on a south-west to north-east axis.

The east and west gabled ends are each three bays, featuring square pilasters at the corners and flanking the projected central bay. These pilasters have stone false machicolation, topped with pyramidal roofs. The west front's centre bay contains a stone doorway with chevron and lobed nook-shafts on scalloped capitals. It also has a band of elaborate triple-interlaced blind arcading, an eight-light wheel window, a stone band resting on a corbel table, and a louvred lancet roof ventilator in the gable apex. The outer bays of the west front have tall lancet windows with side shafts and nailhead arches, brick hoodmoulds with run-out ends, and bands similar to those on the centre. The east end’s central bay has stepped triple round-headed lancets, a stone band like that on the front, and an oculus in the gable apex with a corbel table; the outer bays feature round-headed doorways with a zig-zag central order. The side walls, with four bays each, have pilaster strips and simple corbel tables, alongside two tall round-headed lancets in each bay.

The interior, as reported in 1984, comprises five bays with quatrefoil cast-iron columns supporting a gallery fronted with interlaced blind arcading. An organ loft occupies the west end, situated above an enclosed bay. Later alterations included raising the choir to the sanctuary, featuring a round-headed chancel arch outlined by roll mouldings. A stone reredos with a six-bay arcade stands below stone-shafted lancets with lobed over-arches on scallop capitals. Inside, the church retains open-arcaded roof trusses, original box-pews and benches in the gallery, and a late 19th-century stone pulpit.

The church was originally built for Dr Samuel Warren, who had been expelled from the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, and a district was assigned to him in 1842.