The Church of St Wilfrid is an Anglican church in the suburb of

Northenden Northenden is a suburb of Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 14,771 at the 2011 census. It lies on the south side of the River Mersey, west of Stockport and south of Manchester city centre, bounded by Didsbury to ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, England. It stands on Ford Lane, close to the

River Mersey The River Mersey () is in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it has formed par ...

, approximately south of Manchester city centre. The church is late

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

in origin and was substantially re-built in the 19th century by the Gothic Revival architect

J. S. Crowther Joseph Stretch Crowther (1820 – March 1893) (usually known as J. S. Crowther) was an English architect who practised in Manchester. His buildings are mainly located in Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria. Life and career Crowther studied ...

. The church was designated a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

on 25 February 1952.

History

The origin of St Wilfrid's is possibly Saxon, with a mention in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of a "church (at) Norwardine: (held by) Ranulf and Bigot from Earl Hugh." The present church building dates from the 15th century, but was substantially altered in the 1870s. In 1872, the architect

was commissioned to undertake repairs, but found that the medieval church was substantially without foundations. He therefore undertook complete a rebuilding programme.

Architecture

The church is built on a

cruciform Cruciform is a term for physical manifestations resembling a common cross or Christian cross. The label can be extended to architectural shapes, biology, art, and design. Cruciform architectural plan Christian churches are commonly describe ...

floorplan of red

Alderley Edge Alderley Edge is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England. In 2011, it had a population of 4,780. Alderley Edge is northwest of Macclesfield and south of Manchester, at the base of a steep and thickly wooded sandstone escarpment, Alder ...

sandstone with slate roofs. The core of St Wilfrid's church building is 15th century in origin. Crowther's rebuilding work 1873-76 replaced much of the medieval fabric in the main church building. Crowther's work includes much Gothic ornamentation including carved

grotesques Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...

and

crocket A crocket (or croquet) is a small, independent decorative element common in Gothic architecture. The name derives from the diminutive of the French ''croc'', meaning "hook", due to the resemblance of crockets to a bishop's crosier. Description ...

ed pinnacles. Crowther also added a pair of octagonal stair

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s. Crowther planned to rebuild the bell tower but this scheme was not realised, and today the tower is the only remaining medieval part of the building, designed in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The interior contains some original medieval rood screens, including one above the doorway in the south chapel which depicts "a pair of tumblers and a monkey sitting on a drum. The tumblers can be read in two ways, so that they really do seem to tumble." Adjoining the nave is the Wythenshawe Chapel, containing the burials of the Tatton family of nearby

Wythenshawe Hall Wythenshawe Hall is a 16th-century timber-framed historic house and former manor house in Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, five miles (8 km) south of Manchester city centre in Wythenshawe Park. Built for Robert Tatton, it was home to the ...

. There is a good selection of funerary monuments "to members of the Tatton and Egerton families including: Robert Tatton (d.1689), aedicule with

putti A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University of ...

; Mrs Egerton (d.1784), urn with carved flower

garland A garland is a decorative braid, knot or wreath of flowers, leaves, or other material. Garlands can be worn on the head or around the neck, hung on an inanimate object, or laid in a place of cultural or religious importance. Etymology From the ...

;

William Egerton William Egerton (originally William Tatton; 1749–1806) was an English politician and a member of the Egerton family. Egerton was the son of William Tatton and Hester, sister of Samuel Egerton, who was her brother's heiress. He changed his s ...

(d.1806), woman lying on sarcophagus; and to Thomas Worthington (d.1856), mourning woman with 3 sarcophagi under

weeping willow ''Salix babylonica'' (Babylon willow or weeping willow; ) is a species of willow native to dry areas of northern China, but cultivated for millennia elsewhere in Asia, being traded along the Silk Road to southwest Asia and Europe.Flora of China' ...

." There is a complete set of Victorian stained glass dating from the 1850s which was saved from the old church and reinstalled following Crowther's rebuilding. The glass is thought to have been donated either by the Tatton family, or the Watkin family of

Rose Hill, Northenden Rose Hill on Longley Lane in Northenden, Manchester, England, is a 19th-century Victorian villa. It is most notable as the home of Sir Edward Watkin, "railway king and cross-channel visionary",Hartwell et al. 2004, p 465 and in the late 20 ...

. The windows are the work of noted stained glass designers

Charles Eamer Kempe Charles Eamer Kempe (29 June 1837 – 29 April 1907) was a British Victorian era designer and manufacturer of stained glass. His studios produced over 4,000 windows and also designs for altars and altar frontals, furniture and furnishings, lich ...

William Wailes William Wailes (1808–1881) was the proprietor of one of England's largest and most prolific stained glass workshops. Life and career Wailes was born and grew up in Newcastle on Tyne, England's centre of domestic glass and bottle manufacturing. ...

and Henry Hughes. The church also contains windows by

Percy Bacon Brothers Percy Bacon Brothers was a firm which produced stained glass in London from about 1880 until the late 1930s. The firm was established by the painter and sculptor, Percy Charles Bacon (1860–1935). In about 1892 he was then joined in the busines ...

and Humphries, Jackson and Ambler.

Graveyard

In the large graveyard is the tomb of

Sir Edward Watkin Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet (26 September 1819 – 13 April 1901) was a British Member of Parliament and railway entrepreneur. He was an ambitious visionary, and presided over large-scale railway engineering projects to fulfil his b ...

, Victorian railway magnate, as well as those of many of the Tatton family. The churchyard also contains

war graves War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regu ...

of eight service personnel of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and three from

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Northenden, Church of Saint Wilfrid Churches in Manchester Grade II* listed churches in Manchester Church of England church buildings in Greater Manchester

History

Architecture

Graveyard

See also

References

Sources