St Ambrose's Church is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), 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 com ...

in Heathgate Avenue,

Speke Speke () is a suburb of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is southeast of the city centre. Located near the widest part of the River Mersey, it is bordered by the suburbs of Garston and Hunts Cross, and nearby to Halewood, Hale Village, ...

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Wales, Welsh county of Flintshire across ...

, England. It is an active

in the

Archdiocese of Liverpool The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Liverpool () is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church that covers the Isle of Man and part of North West England. The episcopal see is Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The archdiocese is the centre ...

and the Pastoral Area of Woolton and Halewood. 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, ...

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 ...

History

The church was built between 1959 and 1961. It was designed by Alfred Bullen of Weightman and Bullen, with assistance from Jerzy Faczyński. It was built to serve the housing estate of Speke, which had been started in the 1930s, and which was expanded in the 1950s.

Architecture

Exterior

The church is built on a reinforced concrete frame, with cladding in brick. It has a rectangular plan with a free-standing

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

. To the north is a

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 to ...

high, joined to the body of the church by a low entrance range. To the south of the church is a

Lady Chapel A Lady chapel or lady chapel is a traditional British English, British term for a chapel dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus, particularly those inside a cathedral or other large church (building), church. The chapels are also known as a Mary chape ...

, also joined to the rest of the church by a low range. The body of the church is surrounded by tapering concrete

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s. Between the pilasters, the lower part is in brick, and the upper part is glazed. The windows have curved heads, forming an

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated video, pinball, electro-mechanical, redemption, etc., game ** Arcade video game, a coin-operated video game ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade video game's hardware ** Arcad ...

around the building. The campanile is in brick, and divided by concrete bans into four stages. The top stage contains a bell, and is open between

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid sup ...

s. Surmounting the campanile is an illuminated cross.

Interior

Inside the church are

tunnel 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 ...

s on three sides with a segmental arcade carried on square columns; this forms an

ambulatory The ambulatory ( 'walking place') is the covered passage around a cloister or the processional way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar. The first ambulatory was in France in the 11th century but by the 13t ...

. The roof is flat and

trabeated Post and lintel (also called prop and lintel, a trabeated system, or a trilithic system) is a building system where strong horizontal elements are held up by strong vertical elements with large spaces between them. This is usually used to hold ...

, with pyramidal acoustic panels. The floor is in

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bind ...

, with the sanctuary area raised and in marble. A stone altar slab stands on three steps, and is flanked by a

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

and a

pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...

. There are pews on three sides of the sanctuary. The organ is in a raised position above the entrance. Around the church are

Stations of the Cross The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Via Dolorosa, Way of Sorrows or the , are a series of fourteen images depicting Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ on the day of Crucifixion of Jesus, his crucifixion and acc ...

Adam Kossowski Adam Kossowski (5 December 1905 – 31 March 1986) was a Polish artist, born in Nowy Sącz, notable for his works for the Catholic Church in England, where he arrived in 1943 as a refugee from Soviet labour camps and was invited in 1944 to join ...

. The stained glass is by Gounil and Philip Brown. Wall paintings behind the altar date from the 1990s. The

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...

has two manuals, and was made by

Rushworth and Dreaper Rushworth and Dreaper was a firm of organ builders, and later general instrument suppliers associated with Paul McCartney, based in Liverpool. The manufacturer was founded in 1828 by William Rushworth (organ builder), William Rushworth. In th ...

Appraisal

The church was designated as a listed building on 16 November 2007. It is listed at Grade II, which is the lowest of the three grades, and includes buildings that "are nationally important and of special interest". The listing description states that the building is "on an unusually broad and ambitious scale that is relatively little altered". Pollard and Pevsner 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 are of the opinion that the church is the best building on the Speke estate, "though it is unshakeably redolent of a sports hall and boiler chimney". The church claims to be the first Roman Catholic church in England to be completed to a rectangular plan with a free-standing altar.

References