Church Of St Paul

Church of St Paul

This church comprises three distinct phases of construction: the main body built in 1876-77 by the architects Bird & Whittenbury; the east end extended in 1896 by Frank P. Oakley (born 1862); and the tower, also by Oakley, completed in 1900.

The church is constructed of hammer-dressed buff-coloured sandstone with ashlar dressings and a slate roof. Its plan consists of a long rectangular nave, a short chancel, a south-west porch, a south-east tower, and a north-east vestry.

Exterior

An exceptionally inventive and tall tower and east end dominate the composition, largely concealing the earlier church from Heaton Moor Road. The nave comprises six bays with paired lancet windows set above decorative carved ventilation stones and positioned between buttresses. Three-light plate tracery windows light the clerestory. The buttresses at the west and east ends form stepped extensions of the nave and chancel walls respectively. The west end features a pair of double lancets, while the east end displays a large five-light geometric window.

The original church presents a stolid and repetitive Early English character. This is counter-balanced by the addition of two bays in late 13th-century style to the east end, creating a new chancel together with tower and vestry. The tower rises through four stages supported by full-height angle buttresses terminating in large pinnacles and containing an octagonal lantern. The first stage contains a splayed late 13th-century style doorway to the east with a circular traceried window to the south. The second stage has a two-light window, with two simple lancets lighting the bell-ringing chamber above. The belfry contains two large two-light splayed louvered windows. The octagonal lantern, a reference to St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire (known as the Boston Stump), comprises eight short two-light deeply splayed louvered windows beneath a crenellated pierced parapet. The north side vestry features a transverse-mounted chimney stack and a geometric east window.

Interior

The nave extends through six bays and the chancel through two, with the chancel reached by two steps. All walls are plastered and painted. Choir stalls are contemporary with the new chancel. Geometric encaustic tiles are laid in a geometric pattern throughout. The nave and chancel are covered with a timber barrel-vaulted roof with ribs springing from decorative stone corbels. A tall chancel arch separates the spaces. A frieze of quatrefoil ornament enlivens the chancel wallhead. The aisle roofs are single-braced with exposed common rafters.

The nave arcade consists of two-centred arches supported by alternating circular and octagonal columns with simple bell capitals. The pulpit and font are contemporary with the original church of 1877, both constructed in stone and octagonal in form, relieved by 13th-century style foliage ornament. The font includes a wooden font-cover decorated with blind tracery, the bowl supported on a broad pedestal of blind arcading. The east window (1897) and west window (1901) are both by Albert Moore of London. A complete set of contemporary pews survives.

The principal fixture is the east end reredos and piscina of marble, designed in 1910 by R.B. Preston (died 1934). The design is in Middle Pointed style with restrained Arts and Crafts inlaid marble ornament to the niches.

Setting and Associated Features

The church forms a group with a listed war memorial let into the churchyard wall facing Heaton Moor Road, designed by James Sellars. The churchyard includes a Garden of Remembrance (1965) and three ornate gas lamps on stone bases. To the rear stands a contemporary church hall in pale brick.

Historical Context

The glory of this church lies in its tower, which transforms an otherwise sober and stolid piece of Early English revivalism into a complex, asymmetrical, and imaginative edifice of Middle Pointed ambition. Both Frank Oakley, designer of the tower and new chancel, and R.B. Preston, designer of the principal fixtures, had worked in the Manchester office of the successful Gothic Revival architect J.S. Crowther. Oakley had spent a period working on the restoration and partial rebuilding of Manchester Cathedral with Crowther. Oakley's father was Dean of Manchester Cathedral. As an advocate of Middle Pointed or Decorated Gothic, Crowther had drawn attention to the churches of Lincolnshire, extensively illustrated in the two-volume work he wrote with Henry Bowman, "Churches of the Middle Ages" (1845 and 1853), regarded as "one of the great source books of the favoured style". Although St. Paul's imaginative tower acknowledges the medieval precedent of St. Mary and All Saints, Fotheringhay, it is more likely drawn from St. Botolph's, the Boston Stump. The expressive east end demonstrates the inventiveness characteristic of Oakley's churches of this period, including St. Andrew's, Littleborough (1893-95), All Souls, Heywood (1898-99), St. John's, Heywood (1903-05), and St. Hilda's, Prestwich (1904), of which St. Paul's is the finest.