St Paul's Church, Withington is a

Grade II listed 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 Irel ...

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

in the suburb of

Withington Withington is a suburb of Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies from Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Withington has a population of just ...

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 ...

, in the United Kingdom. It is located on Wilmslow Road, and has an associated Church of England primary school. Worship at St Paul's consists of traditional

Holy Communion The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instituted ...

(''

Book of Common Prayer The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...

'' and ''

Common Worship ''Common Worship'' is the name given to the series of services authorised by the General Synod of the Church of England and launched on the first Sunday of Advent in 2000. It represents the most recent stage of development of the Liturgical Movemen ...

'') and occasional services of

Choral Evensong Evensong is a church service traditionally held near sunset focused on singing psalms and other biblical canticles. In origin, it is identical to the canonical hour of vespers. Old English speakers translated the Latin word as , which beca ...

or evening prayer in support of

L'Arche L'Arche is an international federation of non-profits working to create networks of community where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together. Founded in 1964 by Jean Vanier, Raphaël Simi, and Philip Seux, L'Ar ...

in Manchester.

History

Souchay family grave, St Paul’s Withington

St Paul's was built in 1841, when Withington was growing from a small

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

village into an urban district of Manchester. Prior to the establishment of St Paul's, the nearest Anglican place of worship to Withington was at the

Church of St James, Didsbury St James, Didsbury, on Stenner Lane, is a Grade II* Church of England church in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury and with Emmanuel church is part of the parish of St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury. History In 1235, Albertus de Gresley granted la ...

. St Paul's was built on land donated by

Wilbraham Egerton, 1st Earl Egerton Wilbraham Egerton, 1st Earl Egerton (17 January 1832 – 16 March 1909) was an English Conservative Party politician from the Egerton family. He sat in the House of Commons from 1858 to 1883 when he inherited his peerage and was elevated to ...

to provide a place of worship for local people of Withington. The church was designed by the Mancunian architectural firm Hayley & Brown, who also built a number of churches around

North-West England North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the ceremonial counties of England, administrative counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of ...

. Soon after the foundation of St Paul's, a school was established next to the church in 1844, St Paul's Primary School, also on land donated by Lord Egerton. In April 1847, during a visit to Manchester, the composer

Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...

visited St Paul's to play the newly installed

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

. According to a churchwarden's 1896 account, Mendelssohn "played a service and gave a recital upon the organ and it was pronounced by him to be an excellent instrument". Mendelssohn's Manchester tour also included an organ recital at St Luke's Church, Cheetham Hill. The composer had family and social connections with Withington; the first wedding to take place at St Paul's was that of a cousin of Mendelssohn's wife Cécile, and another cousin was married here in 1864.

Architecture

The church is built of red brick with stone coping. Its most prominent feature is a high clock tower with square

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...

es and four

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...

s. The exterior has some Neo-Norman features, notably tall, rounded-headed lancet windows and a neo-Norman west door whose arch is carved with

dog-tooth In architecture, a dog-tooth or dogtooth pattern is an ornament found in the mouldings of medieval work of the commencement of the 12th century, which is thought to have been introduced by the Crusaders. The earliest example is found in the hal ...

ornamentation. The building was extended in 1863 by J. Lowe, adding a

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

, a southern chancel aisle and organ chamber above, supported by Romanesque arches with foliated

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

s. In 1921 the chancel aisle was converted into a war memorial chapel and a small

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

was built onto the east end of the chapel. The interior was renovated in the 1970s, but retains some original Victorian fittings. The

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

includes three lights at the east end by

Ward and Hughes Ward and Hughes (formerly Ward and Nixon) was the name of an English company producing stained-glass windows. History Ward and Hughes was proceeded by the company Ward and Nixon, whose studio was at 67 Frith Street, Soho. They created large wind ...

, and in the nave are two 1901 windows by local glassmaker Walter J. Pearce: a depiction of a young

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

and a stained-glass copy of

Holman Hunt William Holman Hunt (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910) was an English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His paintings were notable for their great attention to detail, vivid colour, and elaborate symbolis ...

's ''Light of the World'' painting. In the chapel are four small windows commemorating the fallen 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 ...

, including a window dedicated to 15 former members of the Sunday school who were killed in action. There are several wall memorials in the church. The oldest memorial is dedicated to Robert Tebbut, a benefactor of St Paul's who died in 1842, the year after the foundation of the church; the inscription reads, "to whose efforts the erection of this church is mainly due, and who is, alas! the first tenant of its vaults." The

churchyard In Christian countries a churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church, which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language and in both Scottish English and Ulster-Scots, this can also ...

has many Victorian

headstones A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a stele or marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. It is traditional for burials in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions, among others. In most cases, it has the deceased's name, da ...

. A solid oak

lych gate A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, lyke-gate or as two separate words lych gate, (from Old English ''lic'', corpse), also ''wych gate'', is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style ch ...

was installed in 1894 at the entrance to the churchyard, donated by local philanthropist Clayton Chorlton. In 2007 the gates were stolen during a Sunday morning service. File:St Paul’s Church, Withington 13 54 41 479000.jpeg, The 1894 lych gate File:St Paul’s Withington graveyard 13 40 02 049000.jpeg,

Dog-tooth In architecture, a dog-tooth or dogtooth pattern is an ornament found in the mouldings of medieval work of the commencement of the 12th century, which is thought to have been introduced by the Crusaders. The earliest example is found in the hal ...

ornamentation above the Neo-Norman west door File:St Paul’s Withington graveyard 13 40 51 602000.jpeg, Ornate Victorian graves in the churchyard

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Pauls Church Withington

Withington

Churches completed in 1841 19th-century Church of England church buildings

Neoclassical church buildings in England