The Church of St George, Chester Road,

Hulme Hulme () is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, immediately south of Manchester city centre. It has a significant industrial heritage. Historically in Lancashire, the name Hulme is derived from the Old Norse word ...

, Manchester, is an early

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

church by Francis Goodwin, built in 1826–8. It was

restored ''Restored'' is the fourth studio album by American contemporary Christian music musician Jeremy Camp. It was released on November 16, 2004 by BEC Recordings. Track listing Standard release Enhanced edition Deluxe gold edition Standard ...

in 1884 by

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 studie ...

. It 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 3 October 1974. The church was a

Commissioners' church A Commissioners' church, also known as a Waterloo church and Million Act church, is an Anglican church in the United Kingdom built with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824. The 1818 Act supplied ...

, (built to celebrate the victory at the Battle of Waterloo) who allotted the sum of £15,000 for construction. Goodwin was an obvious choice for architect having already undertaken a number of churches in the Midlands and the North West, as well as the original

Manchester Town Hall Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments. The building faces Albert Square to ...

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, '' The Buildings of England'' ( ...

considers that Goodwin's inspiration was

Nicholas Hawksmoor Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principa ...

's St Michael, Cornhill and that "the whole makes a lively and memorable picture". A six-bay nave with "high three-light

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the '' perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It c ...

windows" concludes with a tall tower at the west end, and two high pinnacles at the east. Porches are set at the northwest and southwest corners. Drawing from Pevsner, the

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

inspectors who listed the building in 1974, without an internal inspection, stated that the interior was "reported as having: galleries; Perpendicular arcades; nd awall monument to The Hon. George Berkeley Molyneux (d.1841), by Edward Physick, in form of soldier mourning beside urn." A declining inner-city population in the post-war period, combined with the increasing isolation of the church caused by major road construction in its vicinity, led to St George's closure in 1984. The last Rector Revd Derek Seber worked with Brian Redhead to try to find a long term use for the building including as a museum for Rolls-Royce and as a Museum of Sport . The transformation into such was planned under the then governments Community Programme offering skill training in conservation and building skills. A change in policy brought this initiative to an end. There followed a "twenty-year search for a use which would preserve the interior … proved fruitless and the building was converted to flats (in) 2000–2. The interior can no longer be read as a whole." In 2015, the flat occupying the church tower was on the market for £1 million.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hulme, Church of Saint George, Chester Road Grade II* listed churches in Manchester Church of England church buildings in Greater Manchester Former churches in Greater Manchester Churches in Manchester Gothic Revival church buildings in Greater Manchester Commissioners' church buildings

See also

References