Emmanuel Church is in Brook Street,
Preston,
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 Lancash ...
, England. It is in the deanery of Preston, the archdeaconry of Lancaster, and the
diocese of Blackburn
The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created on 12 November 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool and Burnley, the cities of Lancas ...
. The church 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, a ...
as a designated 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 Irel ...
.
History
Emmanuel Church was built between 1869 and 1870 and was designed by Myres, Veevers and
Myres.
The land for the church was given by Thomas Tomlinson of London, and the foundation stone was laid on 18 August 1868 by
Sir T. G. Fermor-Hesketh, the local Member of Parliament. The church cost about £6,000, and when first built could seat 1,000 people.
Architecture
The church is built in red brick with some decoration in blue, black and white brick, and has
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...
dressings and
slate roofs. It is in a mixture of
Early English and
Decorated architectural styles. The church consists of a five-
bay 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, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, par ...
s, north and south
transept
A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...
s, and 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.
Ov ...
. Attached to the east sides of the transepts are
vestries
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially ...
, each with an
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''. ...
, and at the southwest corner is a tower. At the corners of the lower stages of the tower are angle
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 ( ...
es, and the top stage has corner
pilaster
In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...
s. In the lower stages are
lancets and small circular windows, and in the top stage are paired bell openings. At the top of the tower is a carved band, corner
gargoyle
In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle () is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry walls ...
s in the form of winged beasts, a
parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the 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/breast'). ...
consisting of two pierced bands, the lower in brick and the upper in stone, and octagonal corner
pinnacles.
[
At the west front is a rectangular porch with stone carving, including a pierced parapet containing two inscribed tablets with triangular heads. In front of the porch is a modern glazed extension. Above the porch is a four-light window, over which is a polychrome band with zig-zag decoration. Along the sides of the church the bays are divided by buttresses, and each bay contains a two-light window. In the transepts are small lancet windows, and each transept has a large four-light window in the ]gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...
. The chancel has a five-light east window.[ The windows contain ]Geometrical
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...
tracery
Tracery is an architectural device by which windows (or screens, panels, and vaults) are divided into sections of various proportions by stone ''bars'' or ''ribs'' of moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the stonework elements that support the ...
. Inside the church is a hammerbeam roof, and the transepts contain galleries.[ The three- manual pipe organ was built in 1874, possibly by Ainscough of Preston, and was renovated in 1912 by R. G. Phillips of Preston.
]
Building closure
In 2014, due to dry rot affecting the building, the congregation stopped using the church building and moved to the adjacent community centre. The building was formally closed two years later in February 2016 but the Church continues to meet for worship and other activities in the Plungington Community Centre.
See also
*Listed buildings in Preston, Lancashire
Preston is a city in Lancashire, England, that contains about 340 listed buildings. Its recorded history goes back to the Roman era, and in the medieval period it was a market town and a port, its first charter being granted in 1179. The city sta ...
References
External links
Photograph of the church
from GENUKI GENUKI is a genealogy web portal, run as a charitable trust. It "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland". It gives access to a large collection of information, with the emphas ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Preston, Emmanuel Church
Church of England church buildings in Lancashire
Grade II listed churches in Lancashire
Gothic Revival church buildings in England
Gothic Revival architecture in Lancashire
Churches completed in 1870
Diocese of Blackburn
Emmanuel
Immanuel ( he, עִמָּנוּאֵל, 'Īmmānū'ēl, meaning, "God is with us"; also romanized: , ; and or in Koine Greek of the New Testament) is a Hebrew name that appears in the Book of Isaiah (7:14) as a sign that God will protect the ...