30/01/2025
Favourite Manchester Buildings: Part 2
Here’s the former St Wilfrid’s RC Church in Hulme, converted to workspaces in the 1980s. It looks a little dowdy and plain but it’s important. It was designed by famed and controversial nineteenth century architect Pugin who like Pele has a somewhat more elaborate full name, in the architect’s case, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.
The church was finished in 1842 when Pugin was a relatively young man of thirty two. In some respects this most talented of designers would remain young dying just ten years later. He’s perhaps best known for the interiors of the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) but if you want your eyes to pop out of your head in terms of rich decoration nip down to Cheadle, Staffordshire (not GM) and ogle St Giles’ Church.
Pugin was a key player in the Gothic revival and a return to spirituality in church architecture. He was making a religious point over this as he’d converted to Catholicism and was very passionate about his new faith. As with St Giles, St Wilfrid’s was paid for by John Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury, Pugin’s patron, another Roman Catholic.
There was very little money though so St Wilfrid’s is simplicity itself with a bump on one side for a tower that was never built beyond eave level. The windows are mostly small, they’re called lancet windows, with a bigger rose window on the east. It’s all about the massing, the overall appearance, rising from a large brick and stone plinth. One authority describes it as a ‘seminal building in the history of 19th century church architecture’ because it led other architects to look more closely at genuine medieval churches and attempt to replicate that mood of spirituality. Pugin’s son added the three gabbled confessionals on the south side. That was Edward who also designed the spectacular St Francis’s, now Gorton Monastery, and several other churches in the region.
St Wilfrid was a 7th century English saint known for being a truculent and difficult character. Speaking of which…
