Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

Built between 1884 and 1887, this church was designed by the architect John Edward Knight Cutts. Construction began in 1884 but was delayed due to lack of funds, with the building finally being consecrated on 30th November 1887. It is a simple and massive structure built of brick with some limestone dressings and a plain tile roof, designed in the Early English style.

The plan consists of a tall nave and chancel under a single roof, with north and south aisles and western lobby entrances and baptistry gathered under lean-to roofs. A vestry is positioned at the north east end. The exterior is decorated with buttresses to the aisles and simple brick finials to the lower corners of each gable end. A stone cross crowns each apex. A shingle bell-cote housing a single bell sits astride the ridge where the chancel meets the nave. The windows are lancet lights with cusped heads—four to the west gable end and three to the east gable end, each with a roundel in the apex. At the east gable wall, beneath a canopy, stands an oak Calvary cross with an inscribed commemorative stone base, erected in the early twentieth century as a memorial to those who died in the First World War. The west end has opposing entrances at each corner, set within pointed arches with drip mouldings and fitted with timber double doors.

The interior displays a scissor-braced roof to the nave and chancel, applied to the principal rafters, with alternate wall posts supported on stone corbels at clerestorey level and exposed rafters. The nave comprises six bays and the chancel two, divided by a cluster of three colonettes on either side. Exposed brick arches of each arcade are supported on sandstone piers with limestone bases and caps. The west gable lancets contain coloured glass, whilst the east gable windows depict scenes of the Annunciation, the birth of Christ, the empty tomb, and a figure of the risen Christ. The Lady Chapel, aisles, baptistry, and north west porch contain a remarkable series of stained glass windows, each depicting individual saints within blank brick arches that create a solid, three-dimensional element. The High Altar reredos was installed as a First World War memorial. An organ by the Walsall firm Nicholson & Lord occupies the organ chamber at the east end of the south aisle. The stone font features a hexagonal body supported on six marble columns and is surmounted by an early twentieth-century carved timber canopy depicting the four Archangels, possibly by Dunstan Powell.

Between 1890 and around 1916, approximately fifty stained glass windows depicting individual saints were installed and the Lady Chapel was furnished. The stained glass cartoons were installed over several years, funded by donations and public subscriptions. They depict saints rarely portrayed in English stained glass and appear to have been specially commissioned for this church. These windows have been attributed to John Hardman & Co, one of the country's most important art studios of the mid to late nineteenth century.

The church hall, parish rooms, and boundary wall forming an enclosed courtyard on the north side of the church were added in 1902 and are not considered of special interest.

St Andrew's Church was designed and built on a restricted budget in one of the poorer suburbs of nineteenth-century Walsall. Although rather plain in architectural decoration, the building's bulk and massing create an impressive, soaring internal space. This plainness is more than compensated for by the remarkable survival of a nearly complete collection of stained glass windows, particularly the depictions of individual saints attributed to the noted Victorian firm of John Hardman & Co of Birmingham.