Roman Catholic Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith

Summary

A Roman Catholic church of 1925-1930, considered the masterwork of J Sydney Brocklesby, in French Romanesque style and built of pink and buff Darley Dale and Parbold stone, with concrete domes and vaults.

Reasons for Designation

The Roman Catholic Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith, built from 1925-1930, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith’s is a highly-accomplished French Romanesque design that is considered the finest work of noted architect JS Brocklesby, who also designed most of the internal fixtures;
* other interior fixtures are by designers of significant note, including FX Velarde and William G Simmonds, and are of considerable quality;
* the church’s interior character is significantly enhanced by an unusually large collection of stained glass by the renowned artist Harry Clarke of Dublin, which displays a very high degree of artistic quality and craftsmanship with jewel-like colours and striking painted figures;
* it remains largely unaltered since completion, retaining features that were commonly removed or altered in the wake of liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council.

Historic interest:

* it is the resting place of the venerated relic, the Holy Hand of St Edmund Arrowsmith, a local recusant who was martyred for his faith in 1628 and canonised in 1970. The church retains a shrine created for the hand and a reliquary now housed in the Lady Chapel.

History

The foundation stone of the church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith was laid by the Archbishop of Liverpool on 13 September 1925 and the church was opened by the Archbishop (assisted by the Bishops of Middlesbrough and Portsmouth) almost exactly five years later, on 14 September 1930. The church seated 700 and cost approximately £30,000. It was in part built using supervised labour of local miners at the time of the General Strike.

The church was built to house the shrine of the holy hand of St Edmund Arrowsmith. Arrowsmith was born around 1585 at nearby Haydock, and his mother was a member of the Gerard family. He became a Jesuit priest, saying mass illicitly, for which he was hung, drawn and quartered at Lancaster in 1628. The martyr's hand was donated to the parish by the Gerards in 1929, when he was beatified.

The new church replaced one of 1822 dedicated to St Oswald, with adjoining priest's house and burial ground, given by Lord Gerard on part of the estate of Garswood Hall. The 1822 cast iron gates and gate piers to the churchyard survive and are separately listed (National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1068463). The adjacent quadrant walls and stone piers do not appear to be present on the 1849 1:10,560 Ordnance Survey (OS) map and are probably mid-C19. The presbytery as depicted on the same map appears to have faced west, and the extant house (also listed, NHLE entry 1356252) may have been rebuilt in the mid-C19.

The church was designed by JS Brocklesby at the request of the parish priest, Fr J O'Meara. This was a time of increasing Catholic confidence, coinciding with the centenary of Catholic Emancipation in 1929. Early-C20 Catholic church design saw a move away from Gothic in favour of Byzantine, Early Christian and Romanesque models. St Oswald's has been described as ambitious for its date, with a confident and unabashed historicism, and a thoughtful and interesting plan, full of rich spatial experiences. It is the culmination of a closely related sequence of designs by Brocklesby inspired by the Romanesque churches of the south of France, including St Augustine, Nottingham (1921-1923, NHLE entry 1406263), Sacred Heart, Tunstall, Staffordshire (1922-1923, NHLE entry 1221068), and St Joseph, Burslem, Staffordshire (1925-1927, NHLE entry 1297960). It has also been described as Brocklesby’s masterwork.

Brocklesby's original design for the church was similar to that for the church of the Sacred Heart, Tunstall, but following discussions with Fr O'Meara, the plans were adapted, abandoning parapets, pitched roofs over the domes, more traditional upper stages to the towers and a riot of flying buttresses to the apse, in favour of greater simplicity, only Norman arches, exposed domes and a conical spiky stone roof to the vice. The resulting design is reminiscent of French Romanesque churches (especially the cathedrals of Perigueux and Poitiers), but with a stripped, modelled character similar to that evolved by JH Gibbons.

The stonemasonry was carried out in a traditional manner, with master masons Percy Howe and his brother supervising ordinary masons and tool marks being left with no fine dressing attempted. All the detail and the mouldings, capitals, columns, and bases were evolved for the work by Brocklesby, but with very few detailed drawings, everything instead being set out full size on the job.

FX Velarde designed the shrine for the relic which was built in the ambulatory of the new church in 1934 (when the Vatican approved display of the hand for veneration), with bronze gates. He also designed a monstrance and chalice for the church, and is thought to be the designer of the sacristy furniture and gates.

The stained glass in Expressionist style by Harry Clarke was installed between 1930 and 1937, with the west window and the seven at high level in the apse installed before Clarke's death in 1931, and a further seven in the ambulatory, three in the chapel of St Joseph, and one in the chapel of St Theresa.

The church is remarkably little-altered, retaining many features that were commonly removed or altered in the wake of liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council. Four windows in the Lady Chapel by the Harry Clarke Studio were added in 1970 after the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, when the relic was moved to the Lady Chapel and the church assumed its current joint dedication. Two small apse windows in that chapel may be by Gordon Forsyth, who prepared designs for the larger windows in the chapel before Clarke's appointment, and applied the mosaic to the chapel’s apse ceiling. In 2000 Design Lights added a Millennium window at the south-west end of the ambulatory, and a glazed vestibule has been added at the west doorway (with the original doors converted to slide rather than hinge).

Details

A Roman Catholic church of 1925-1930 by J Sydney Brocklesby, in French Romanesque style.

MATERIALS: pink and buff Darley Dale and Parbold stone, concrete domes and vaults.

PLAN: nave, chancel and ambulatory with apsidal shrine; south-west tower, north-west vice and north and south chapels to the nave (ritual west is actual north, ritual orientation is used throughout).

EXTERIOR: the walling is of squared rubble with pink blocks intermingled with the buff, and openings throughout are enriched with Norman carvings to their sills, jambs, arches and archivolts. Hardly any two details are similar, yet all conform to the style in which the church is built. The walls have a two-stepped plinth. The east end has an apsidal chancel with half-dome behind a parapet, and seven clerestory windows, and ambulatory below with billeted Lombard frieze with spitters and weathered buttresses, and a sill band. The small apsidal shrine has a small window and an impost band.

The nave of five bays has a clerestory with a corbel table of carved heads, and square pinnacles (each with Lombardy frieze and diagonal grotesques) rising from plain triangular flying buttresses flanking the narrower central and end bays. At the west end of the north wall is the round vice, with a spiky stone conical roof.

Chapels, sacristy and confessionals flank the nave under continuous walls in the manner of aisles, with Lombardy friezes and sill bands. The north-east sacristy has an apsidal end with a window, and two windows to the north. The St Joseph chapel to the west is taller and has a wide three-window bay at the left, flanked by weathered buttresses and with an impost band, and a blind bay to the right with a link (not included) to the presbytery. The confessionals to the west are lower and have a carved-head corbel table, and three windows lighting the rear passage.

Two south chapels each of three bays flank the south entrance, with buttresses placed as per the nave above. Windows to the (western) chapel of St Theresa are plain, those to the chapel of Our Lady and the English Martyrs have shafts. The entrance has carved doors, and a moulded plinth and impost band. The east end of the Lady chapel has a round apse with half-cone stone roof and two small windows. The nave has triplets of windows in the second and fourth bays, beneath the domes which are just visible above the parapet, with copper-flashband coverings over the concrete. The chapel roofs are not visible but are concrete barrel vaults now covered in brown felt.

The west front has a carved-head corbel table and a billeted impost band to a giant arch with three shafts (one chamfered), enclosing the west window (with shafts and sill and impost bands) and the entrance (with three carved shafts and an impost band). The tympanum over the entrance has a relief of the coronation of the Virgin and the original carved doors with bronze handles now slide to open. On the corbel table above the arch is a statue of St Oswald. The vice to the left has a round-headed window on a sill course, with slits above and below. The tower to right has angle buttresses, three-times weathered. Windows to the west and south faces have shafts and hood moulds with carved-head stops; the second stage has tall slots and a moulded cornice, with paired round-headed bell openings and pyramidal roof (above a Lombardy frieze) to the upper stage.

INTERIOR: the church is noted for its excellent carving of corbels, arches, columns and fixtures by the Howe brothers, and as the shrine of the hand of the martyr St Edmund Arrowsmith. It retains its original high altar, communion rails, nave pulpit, confessionals and western baptistery with font. It has a fine collection of windows by Harry Clarke of Dublin, with intensely coloured glass giving a glowing, jewel-like quality, complemented by densely textured paint and striking faces with pointed chins and wide eyes.

The five-stepped chancel has an arch with paired shafts, and a stencilled half-domed roof. To the clerestory are seven windows with glass of 1930-1931 by Harry Clarke, (all of saints devoted to the Eucharist). The flooring is marble, with an arcaded rail of Sienese marble with bronze gates, and Pietrasanta marble high altar on three steps, with arcaded front incorporating mosaics representing the Evangelists and Agnus Dei, all by Brocklesby. The voluptuous, Baroque mahogany forward altar is thought to have come from Garswood Hall rather than the earlier church. To the north and south are five-bay sedilia with interlaced arcades and blind outer bays. To the rear a five-bay stilted arcade gives views to the ambulatory.

To either side of the chancel, axial arches on corbels access the ambulatory, which continues around the nave in the manner of aisles (with terrazzo floors to the ambulatory and central aisle of the nave). The apse ambulatory (spanned by similar transverse arches at its entrances) has a further seven similar windows by Harry Clarke, completed after his death. The south-western Millennium window of the Pentecost is by Design Lights in similar style. A small eastern apse houses the shrine of 1934 by FX Velarde, of marble with bronze gates and a grilled niche for the relic.

The nave has three-bay units with arcades on patterned quatrefoil piers (opening to the ambulatory), and a small intermediate bay, with enriched transverse arches between them. The three-bay units have triple clerestory windows and saucer domes (with later painted stars) over, with stepped stone pendentives, and the intermediate bay has a flat concrete roof. The bow-fronted pulpit by Brocklesby and carved by the Howes has a Byzantine panel with peacocks, inspired by a relief at Ravenna. The end panels of the oak pews are intricately carved with individual designs.

The main sacristy in the north-east corner has carved doors and retains its original oak furnishings, with incised detail possibly by Velarde, who designed a monstrance and chalice, and may also have designed the bronze gates to the small sacristy to the west, with a geometric Art Deco character. The north chapel (St Joseph) has a three-bay arcade to the ambulatory, matching that from the nave, and has a west screen of three stilted enriched arches, to the passage for the north door and confessionals. The window arcade matches the ambulatory arcade, with Harry Clarke glass of St Thomas More, St Columba and St John Fisher. The roof is a plain concrete barrel vault. The alabaster altar is from the 1822 church, remodelled by Brocklesby. In a shafted arched recess above it it is a fine painted timber reredos of 1935 by William G Simmonds, with a relief of St Joseph. Confessionals to the west are walled to the ambulatory and retain original oak front and back doors, arcaded at the front.

The south chapels have three bay arcades to the ambulatory. The eastern one (Our Lady and the English Martyrs) has an east apse with a rear arcade and an altar of Pietrasanta marble, with arcaded front, by Brocklesby. The relic is now housed in a glass-fronted tabernacle on the gradine of this altar. The mosaic tesserae in the apsidal vault were supplied for Gordon Forsyth by Boris Anrep, known for his mosaics in Westminster Cathedral, and Forsyth probably designed the two small windows. This chapel has a similar west screen, vaulted roof and window arcade to St Jospeh’s chapel, with four English Martyr windows of 1970 by the Harry Clarke Studio. The south entrance passage beyond the west screen has a large marble statue of St Edmund Arrowsmith by G.Adani of Correggio, Italy, and above it a crucifix carved by Stuflesser of Ortisei.

The chapel of St Theresa to the west of the south entrance has a Brocklesby altar like that of the Lady chapel and a framed altarpiece of the enthroned Virgin and Child with St Dominic and Pope Pius V, probably from the old church and presumably donated by the Gerards. A window by Harry Clarke depicts St Agnes in striking emerald green.

At the west end is an organ loft on an arcade with four-shaft columns and stilted arches either side of the central arch, and blind arcading to the gallery front. The west window by Harry Clarke depicts the Ascension of Christ, King and Priest. The baptistery is in the base of the tower with a corbelled-arch entrance with fine gates and retains a font from the earlier church, octagonal with clustered-shaft plinth, and inscribed on the foot ‘PRESENTED/ BY THE CHILDREN/ OF ST OSWALD’S/ (ILLEGIBLE)’.

In the arches of the gallery arcade are two freestanding square holy water stoups, with reliefs by Brocklesby and the Howes, depicting angels (reminiscent of Eric Gill’s figures) banishing demons on the west face, and crosses on the east face.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

213561

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Spencer, C, Wilson, G, Elbow Room The Story of John Sydney Brocklesby Arts and Crafts Architect, (1984), 124-139
Pollard, R, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England. Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, (2006), 125-7, plates 114 and 115

Websites
2005 archive photos, accessed 26/03/26 from https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/job/2K/07401
Ripley, Rev Francis J, The Holy Hand (1970), accessed 23/04/26 from https://newton-le-willows.com/?p=4807

End of official list entry

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