Parish Church Of St Chad

This Anglican church was built between 1912 and 1914 to designs by Nicol & Nicol of Birmingham. It is constructed of narrow coursed stone bricks with Westmorland slate roofs and features Staffordshire sandstone piers in the nave.

Plan and Layout

The nave has aisles on both sides, with the sanctuary terminating in an apse matched by another apse serving the north aisle. At the west end, a baptistery sits between two entrances. A porch is located on the north side, while on the south side the falling ground level accommodates a boiler room and storage beneath the south aisle. Vestries flank the east end.

Exterior

The west end presents a central projecting baptistery flanked by two entrances. A large four-light round-headed window with geometric style tracery is set between shallow buttresses that terminate in square capitals from which the arched gable springs. Below the window, a raised pattern in stone bricks appears, and beneath that sits a foundation plaque inscribed: "To the greater glory of God/ and/ in the faith of our blessed redeemer/ this stone was laid by/ the Viscountess Mountgarret/ on the 17th February 1912/ in the name of the Holy Trinity", followed by the names of the vicar, Arthur W Goodwin, and two wardens. In the apex of the nave gable above the baptistery, a bell housing contains a single bell cast by Taylors of Loughborough in 1913. The nave walls terminate in shallow buttresses with deep modillion cornices. The aisles each have an entrance within a projecting porch featuring sloping lateral battered buttresses and small round-arched side windows. The wooden panelled double doors are round-arched with wrought iron door furniture.

The north elevation features a three-bay aisle with a mono-pitch roof and modillion cornice. Each bay is defined by a battered buttress and arcading with a round-arched window. East of the aisle stands the three-bay Lady Chapel with a higher roof and modillion cornice. The bays are defined by battered buttresses and arcading, with angle buttresses at the corner. The western bay has a porch similar in style to those at the east end. The remaining two bays each contain triple round-arched windows. The chapel terminates in a rounded apse with a domed roof. A single-storey flat-roofed sacristy extends east of the Lady Chapel with a single round-arched window. The six nave bays are arcaded with two evenly spaced round-arched clerestorey windows in each bay. Above runs a modillion cornice and plain parapet, and the nave ends in a domed apse. A highly ornate iron rain hopper is situated above the north porch.

The south elevation mirrors the north except that the aisle extends for the full six bays of the nave with no Lady Chapel, and the two western bays of the aisle have arcaded round-arched doors below leading to a single space for storage and boilers. The choir vestry at the east end has two windows.

The apse at the east end has four battered buttresses dividing five bays, each with a round-arched window and a modillion cornice below the leaded dome. Each bay displays a raised lozenge pattern in stone bricks below the window. The Lady Chapel apse to the north has battered buttresses with blind windows between. The sacristy and vestry each have a recessed arcade panel containing two round-arched windows. Between them, projecting from the apse, is a corridor with a central door in an arcaded panel flanked by a small round-arched window on each side. A modillion cornice runs beneath the flat roofs of the vestries and corridor.

Interior

The apsidal sanctuary is defined by a semi-circular arch without capitals. The walls of the apse are entirely covered in opus sectile mosaic. The decoration comprises green with gold vertical lines at the base, a wide blue band above, an inscription in red on gold reading 'ET INCARNATUS EST DE SPIRITU SANCTO EX MARIA VIRGINE ET HOMO FACTUS EST' above that, topped by a figure of Christ in Majesty on a gold background. Five round-arched windows evenly spaced above the inscription bear stained images of five archangels (Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Uriel and Chamuel), with the Greek letters alpha and omega between the central two windows. A baldachino in polished oak stands over the altar, with the pattern of the mosaic behind echoed in its arch. The raised platform for the altar is in marble. A door to the left leads to the sacristy. Beyond the altar rail are choir pews to either side in polished wood with geometric carved detail.

The roof of the church is barrel vaulted in timber, with trusses between each of the clerestorey windows. The nave is divided from the aisles and Lady Chapel by six semi-circular arches with dentilled decoration, supported on pillars with plain basket capitals—piers and arches are in red Staffordshire sandstone. The organ is sited on the south side behind the eastern two arches. The hexagonal pulpit in polished wood is attached to the second pillar on the north side.

The Lady Chapel with its apsidal end is also decorated with mosaics, featuring a central figure of the Virgin Mary carrying Jesus standing on a rainbow, set in a background of gold weave with vertical green bands, panelled blue below and above, the upper portion set with stars. A carved inscription dedicates the mosaic to the memory of Benjamin and May Goodwin, parents of the vicar, and was paid for by him. A door to the right leads to the sacristy. Stained glass in the Lady Chapel windows is from St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, used in new settings to form crosses at the apex of each window.

The north porch opens from the Lady Chapel, with double wooden doors featuring central circular leaded glass panels and wrought iron door furniture, and a semi-circular overlight in wood with a central circular leaded glass light. The two west doors are similar. The floor is parquet throughout the nave, aisles and Lady Chapel. The baptistery at the west end has a marble floor and is wood panelled to half height, with a stone font reportedly from the previous church. The choir vestry, which has fitted cupboards, is accessed from the east end of the south aisle and is linked to the sacristy by a corridor running behind the sanctuary. There is a further war memorial fashioned out of part of an aeroplane propeller near the west end.

History

The parish of St Chad in Bradford was created in 1910 from parts of two pre-existing parishes: St Paul's in Manningham and St Philip's in Girlington. A small iron church to the south of the current building was initially used, later converted to a Sunday School. The church was built in 1912-14, designed by Nicol and Nicol with funding from Viscount Mountgarret, lord of the manor of Bradford, at a cost of approximately £7,000. It was built in the grounds of Manningham Lodge, which was demolished at around the same time. Viscountess Mountgarret laid the foundation stone in 1912.

Internal work on the opus sectile mosaic decoration of the Lady Chapel was dedicated in 1913 to the family of the vicar, Arthur W Goodwin, though current research has not confirmed the designer or maker, though it is likely to be by James Powell & Sons of Whitefriars, London. The local newspaper report on the consecration of the church in October 1913 states that neither the Lady Chapel nor the main apse mosaics were finished at this time. Both mosaics (opus sectile work) were finished in 1919, when the stained glass windows in the main apse were also inserted as a war memorial to the fallen of the First World War. The stained glass and mosaic work was completed by James Powell & Sons to designs by Charles Hardgrave. Three private donors contributed to the windows, with the majority of the mosaics paid for by Reverend Goodwin.

James Powell and Sons were pre-eminent in producing glass for much of the 19th century and into the 20th century. They became associated with leading designers such as Edward Burne-Jones, William de Morgan and Philip Webb, and produced glass for William Morris's Red House. Opus sectile is a decorative technique using cut pieces of glass of different sizes, a technique rediscovered and refined by Powells in the late 19th century, reusing waste glass to produce opaque coloured pieces. Charles Hardgrave (1848-post 1920) was Powell's chief designer by 1880, with a speciality in opus sectile and mural decorations. The sketch and cartoon provided for St Chad's in 1919 were among the last he produced before his death.

The first organ, built in 1922 by Morgan & Smith, was replaced in 1988 by a three-manual Binns. The Sunday School has been replaced by a late 20th-century vicarage, but architects' plans show that the church is unaltered.