St Ann's Church is a

redundant Redundancy or redundant may refer to: Language * Redundancy (linguistics), information that is expressed more than once Engineering and computer science * Data redundancy, database systems which have a field that is repeated in two or more table ...

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church in

Warrington Warrington () is an industrial town in the Borough of Warrington, borough of the same name in Cheshire, England. The town sits on the banks of the River Mersey and was Historic counties of England, historically part of Lancashire. It is east o ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

, England. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. The church was closed for worship in November 1995, and since 1996 has been used as an indoor climbing centre. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s the church was heated by steam from the then adjacent Tetley Walker's brewery. A new church, also dedicated to St Ann, was built on a different site half a mile away in 2000.

History

The church was built between 1866 and 1868 to a design by John Douglas. There were delays caused by bad weather, and it was not until local solicitor

William Beamont William Beamont (1797–1889) was an English solicitor and local philanthropist. He lived in the town of Warrington, in the north-west of England. Life Beamont was the first mayor of Warrington after its incorporation as a municipal boro ...

paid the builder that the church was consecrated, on 27 February 1869. In 1996 it became a climbing centre with a

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft with non-sloped ...

in the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

. These changes are said to be reversible.

Architecture

The church is built in red brick with some dressings in blue brick and it has a

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

roof. Its plan consists of a six-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

without

aisle An aisle is a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments, courtrooms, ...

s, an

apsidal In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In Byzant ...

chancel, north and south porches, a north

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colony, English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spen ...

and a southeast tower. The tower is in the angle between the nave and the chancel and in three stages. In the lower stage is a single

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

and in the second stage are three similar windows. The third stage contains pairs of louvred bell openings and above these is a

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal keyed into and projecting from a wall to carry a wikt:superincumbent, bearing weight, a type of bracket (architecture), bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in t ...

led

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...

. On the southwest corner is a 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 * Optical microscope#Objective turret (revolver or revolving nose piece), Objective turre ...

rising to the height of the tower and capped by a tall conical-roofed turret rising above the parapet. On top of the tower is a tall steeply-pitched

saddleback roof A saddleback roof is usually on a tower, with a ridge and two sloping sides, producing a gable at each end. See also * List of roof shapes Roof shapes encompass a broad range of designs, including flat (or shed roof, shed), gabled, hip roof, h ...

. In the sanctuary (but currently obscured) are paintings of ''The Evangelists'' by Westlake, dated 1868, which were repainted by T. Hesketh in 1894. Edward Hubbard describes its architecture as being "quite startlingly bold and original". In the ''

Buildings of England The ''Pevsner Architectural Guides'' are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. ''The Buildings of England'' series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes pub ...

'' series it is described as being "an impressively forceful High Victorian work..., bold and uncompromising", and the "bizarre juxtaposition" of the climbing walls and 19th-century architecture is described as "strangely enjoyable".

References

External links

Climbing centre websiteNew St Ann's Church website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Old Saint Ann's Church, Warrington Churches completed in 1868 19th-century Church of England church buildings Grade II* listed churches in Cheshire Gothic Revival church buildings in England Gothic Revival architecture in Cheshire John Douglas buildings Churches in Warrington Former Church of England church buildings Church of England church buildings in Cheshire