Anglican Church Of St Benedict

The Church of St Benedict is an Anglican church completed in 1909 to designs by the Birmingham architectural firm Nicol and Nicol. Built in the Byzantine Revival style, it replaces an earlier simple rectangular mission church and is constructed in thin red brick with rubbed brick and sandstone dressings beneath a plain tile roof, arranged on a basilican plan.

Exterior

The substantial red-brick church features small round-headed windows throughout. The aisles and clerestorey walls are parapetted, with the clerestorey displaying a stone cornice and ten two-light windows with a circular light above, each set within a brick round-headed arch. Green inlaid crosses are positioned between the windows. The aisles contain blind round arches divided by brick buttresses, each with a single round-headed light at the centre. A side chapel projects from the south aisle.

Two porches are positioned on the south side and two on the north. The western porch of the north aisle projects from the blind arch and features a recessed chamfered brick doorway with a broken triangular pediment to the gable. Between the gable and parapet pediment sits a niche containing a statue of St Benedict. The east end is dominated by a central bowed apse with battered buttresses. A corresponding baptistery projection rises at the west end. On either side of the east apse stand single-storey vestries displaying stone and brick chequerwork.

Interior

The interior contains five-bay arcades formed of round sandstone piers supporting round arches with moulded stone hood mould above and dentilated detailing. Above the arcades, brick walling rises to the clerestorey windows, which are divided by brick corbels that support the wooden barrel-vaulted nave roof with painted decoration.

The east end is enriched by a Byzantine-style mural painting of the apse executed by Henry Holiday between 1912 and 1919. This depicts Christ in Glory with angels and saints arranged in arcading below. Though many of the church's fittings have been replaced, a marble font on a pilaster-enriched base survives, as does an elegant arcaded screen to the north aisle.

History and Significance

The church was constructed in 1909 following designs by Nicol and Nicol. The associated St Benedict's Vicarage, also designed by the same architects, was erected in 1911–12 and was separately listed Grade II in 1997.

Henry Holiday, the artist responsible for the apse painting, was a significant Victorian figure known for easel paintings, stained-glass design, and mural schemes. In addition to his work at St Benedict, Holiday executed mural schemes at Worcester College, Oxford, and at Bradford and Rochdale Town Halls. His knowledge of Byzantine art, gained through visits to Italy and Greece, directly informed the design of the apse painting, which complements the church's architectural style most effectively. This was among the final major works of Holiday's long artistic career.