Looking at Buildings

, printed from the Looking at Buildings website on Saturday 15th March 2025

Manchester's Churches and Faiths

GothicGlossary Term [1] principles of A. W. N. Pugin's church of St Wilfrid in Hulme of 1842 pointed to the future. J. S. Crowther was one of Manchester's most serious students of GothicGlossary Term [2] and his high and noble churches are amongst the best in Manchester of their day, including St Benedict, Ardwick (1880)and St Mary, Hulme(1856-8).

RomanGlossary Term [3] Catholic churches J. A. Hansom's daring Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, Chorlton-on-Medlock, retains an unusually good range of contemporary furnishings, while the idiosyncratic St Mary, Mulberry Street by Weightman & Hadfield and E.W. Pugin's St Francis, Gorton are both of more than local interest.

Manchester, Synagogue, Cheetham Hill Road

Manchester in the late C19 was also the home of the largest Jewish community in Victorian England, London excepted, concentrated in the streets around Cheetham Hill, where the former Sephardic Synagogue of 1874-5 by Edward Salomons survives. It is an exceptionally rich and well-preserved example of a synagogue in the Moorish style which is now home to Manchester's Jewish Museum.

One of the most original buildings of its day, Edgar Wood's extraordinary First Church of Christ Scientist (1903-04), is tucked away in the suburbs on Daisy Bank Road, Fallowfield. It is a brilliant work of great individuality which speaks for the spirit of an age searching for an alternative to historical precedent.

A few churches were built during the 1960s, of which Maguire & Murray's Church of the Ascension in Hulme 1968-70, and Desmond Williams & Associates' RomanGlossary Term [4] Catholic St Augustine's in Chorlton-on-Medlock (1967-8) reflect the new liturgy of that decade.

Manchester, First Church of, Christ Scientist, Fallowfield
Manchester, St Augustine, Chorlton-on-Medlock

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Last updated: Monday, 26th January 2009