St Alban's Church, Macclesfield

St Alban's Church, Macclesfield
West front of St Alban's Church, Macclesfield
St Alban's Church, Macclesfield Location in Cheshire
Coordinates: 53°15′36″N 2°08′02″W / 53.2600°N 2.1340°W / 53.2600; -2.1340
OS grid reference	SJ 912 736
Location	Chester Road, Macclesfield, Cheshire
Country	England
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Website	St Alban, Macclesfield
History
Dedication	Saint Alban
Architecture
Status	Parish church
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II*
Designated	17 March 1977
Architect(s)	A. G. Pugin
Architectural type	Church
Style	Gothic Revival
Completed	1841
Construction cost	c. £8,000
Specifications
Materials	Stone, Welsh slate roof
Administration
Diocese	Shrewsbury
Clergy
Priest(s)	Father Peter Burke

St Alban's Church, Macclesfield, is in Chester Road, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. It is an active Roman Catholic parish church. The church has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. It was designed by A. G. Pugin and is described as a "church of exceptional interest among the works of this major architect".^[1]

History

The church was designed in 1838 and built between 1839 and 1841. Some of the money needed to build it was given by the Earl of Shrewsbury; the total cost was about £8,000 (£580,000 as of 2011).^[2][3]

Architecture

Exterior

The church is built in stone rubble with ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roof. Its plan consists of a west tower, a nave with a high clerestory, north and south aisles, a chancel, a south chapel, a south porch, and a vestry in the northeast angle. Its style is Perpendicular. The tower is unfinished. Its west doorway is deeply moulded with five-light window above it. Above this is an arched light flanked by statues in niches. The tower has clasping buttresses and a stair turret in the southeast angle.^[1] The aisles have five-light windows and in the clerestory are ten closely set two-light windows. The east window has seven lights.^[3]

Interior

In the church the piers carrying the arcade are very slender.^[3] At the entrance to the tower, the chancel, and the chapel are tall, painted Perpendicular arches. In the tower are the organ and the choir gallery. The chancel arch contains a rood screen.^[1] On the screen are three 15th-century German figures that were coloured by Pugin.^[3] The chancel has a coloured tile floor, a sedilia in the south wall, and an ornate altar piece with a statue in an aedicule over the tabernacle and 12 figures of saints on each side of it. The altarpiece of the chapel consists of a statue in a niche flanked by panels depicting scenes from the life of Mary. Another altar is at the east end of the north aisle.^[1] The pulpit was added in 1854. The pulpit, and the altarpiece in the chapel, were designed by E. W. Pugin, and carved by Richard Hassall. The stained glass in the east window is either by William Warrington or William Wailes to A. G. Pugin's design. The south window in the chapel is dated 1846, is by Hardman, and also designed by Pugin.^[3] The organ was built by Gray & Davison and moved to St Alban's from St Michael's Church, Macclesfield in 1885. It was rebuilt by the same firm in the 1910s.^[4]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "Church of St Alban, Macclesfield", The National Heritage List for England (English Heritage), 2011, http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1206898, retrieved 2 May 2011 
2. ^ UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Lawrence H. Officer (2010) "What Were the UK Earnings and Prices Then?" MeasuringWorth.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Hartwell, Claire; Hyde, Matthew; Hubbard, Edward; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2011) [1971], Cheshire, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17043-6 
4. ^ Macclesfield St. Alban, British Institute of Organ Studies, http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N02124, retrieved 13 August 2008