St Paul's Church is situated within the city of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

, England, in the suburb of

Parson Cross Firth Park ward—which includes the districts of Firth Park, Longley, Parson Cross and parts of Wincobank—is one of the 28 electoral wards in City of Sheffield, England located in the northern part of the city and covering an area ...

on Wordsworth Avenue. St Paul's is a modern looking post war church which has been designated as 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 Irel ...

History

St Paul's was opened in 1959 to serve the New Parson Cross estate which had been constructed on previous

greenfield land Greenfield land is a British English term referring to undeveloped land in an urban or rural area either used for agriculture or landscape design, or left to evolve naturally. These areas of land are usually agricultural or amenity properties b ...

in the late 1940s as the City of Sheffield cleared its

slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...

housing and expanded into the countryside. The church was designed by the Scottish

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Basil Spence Sir Basil Urwin Spence, (13 August 1907 – 19 November 1976) was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Moderni ...

who was forced to work with a limited budget. Spence was working on his most famous design

Coventry Cathedral The Cathedral Church of Saint Michael, commonly known as Coventry Cathedral, is the seat of the Bishop of Coventry and the Diocese of Coventry within the Church of England. The cathedral is located in Coventry, West Midlands, England. The curren ...

at the same time that he was overseeing the construction of St Paul's.''"A History of Sheffield"'',

David Hey David G. Hey (18 July 1938 – 14 February 2016) was an English historian, and was an authority on surnames and the local history of Yorkshire. Hey was the president of the British Association for Local History, and was a published author of seve ...

, , Page 277 Gives some information on post war housing development in Sheffield. When St Paul's was opened in 1959 it did not have its own

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

and was purely a daughter church to St Mary's, Ecclesfield. However the area around St Paul's was declared a Conventional District within the Ecclesfield parish and in 1973 the separate parish of St Paul, Wordsworth Avenue was created. The new housing estate never had an official name, so the parish is one of the few which is identified by its street address rather than by its district. The parish was badly hit by the collapse of the Sheffield steel industry in the 1980s and a high level of unemployment was created and today "New Parson Cross is part of one of the most deprived areas of the city".Sheffield City Council.
Gives this quote.A Church Near You.
Gives history of church and parish.

Architecture

Spence's design for St Paul's is quite simple although this is not obvious at first glance. The church is basically two brick walls joined by a shallow

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

roof strengthened by diagonal steel bracing. The ends of the church consist almost entirely of

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

with Spence integrating some the ideas he had used at St Oswald's,

Tile Hill Tile Hill is a suburb in the west of Coventry, West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is mostly residential and partly industrial, with some common land and wooded areas. Tile Hill railway station is located on the West Coast Main L ...

in 1957. To the front of the church is a 15 metre high

campanile A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

consisting of just two brick walls with concrete ties in between. There is a six-metre cross on top of the campanile. The church hall stands just to the north within the church grounds. The interior has a balcony reached by steps on which the organ stands. While the altar is screened to give it some privacy from the big end window by a hardwood panel made from

African Teak African teak is a common name for several plants and may refer to: *''Baikiaea plurijuga'', native to the northern Kalahari *''Milicia excelsa'', also known as iroko, native to Africa from the Ivory Coast to Ethiopia and south to Angola and Mozambi ...

. Spence's personal gift for the church were the altar ornaments which are made from hammered iron.''"Pevsner Architectural Guides - Sheffield"'', Ruth Harman & John Minnis, , Page 37 Gives details of architecture.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Pauls Church, Wordsworth Avenue Churches in Sheffield Church of England church buildings in South Yorkshire History of Sheffield Churches completed in 1959 20th-century Church of England church buildings Grade II* listed buildings in Sheffield Grade II* listed churches in South Yorkshire