Roman Catholic Church of St Alban with attached Presbytery

Details

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement to update text on the 11 March 2022

SK59NW
4/33

CONISBROUGH
Denaby Main
WADWORTH STREET (south side)
Church of St. Alban with attached presbytery

II

Roman Catholic church with attached presbytery, 1897-8 to designs by Empsall and Clarkson of Bradford, the contractors were Robinsons of Bradford; the south-west tower, north aisle and chapel were added in 1910 (Maye). Gothic Revival style.

In 1859 the colliery of Denaby Main was opened, with the nearby Cadeby pit opening in 1889. New terraced housing was built for miners’ families at the village of Denaby Main from the 1860s. Initially the growing Catholic population travelled to St Peter-in-Chains in Doncaster, or St Joseph’s in Wath upon Dearne. A mission was founded in 1894 by the Revd Thomas Kavanagh and the colliery allowed a disused infants’ school behind houses on Doncaster Road to be used as a temporary chapel. By 1895 there was a congregation of 90 and the Revd Kavanagh began fundraising for a new church. The Montague family donated an acre of land. The architects’ practice of Empsall & Clarkson of Bradford was appointed, with Robinsons of Bradford as the contractors. Work began in 1897 and the first Mass was said in the new church on 22 June 1898.

In 1910 the church was extended with a bell tower, north aisle and Sacred Heart chapel. Soon afterwards the sacristy and south vestibule were refurbished.
In 1912 a catastrophic explosion at Cadeby pit killed 89 men, many of them from the congregation at St Alban’s.

In 1923 the Sacred Heart chapel became a war memorial chapel and marble panels depicting St Joan of Arc and St George were installed to represent friendship between England and France. The church was also redecorated with mosaics and murals by N A Jarvis and stained glass windows were installed in the aisle to celebrate the church’s Silver Jubilee.

In 1949 a new high altar and carved oak reredos was installed in time for the consecration Mass.

Deeply-coursed dressed sandstone with Welsh slate roofs.
The church has a nave and chancel in one with a north aisle between single-storey and two-storey gabled projections and a south-west tower rising from the south aisle; a one-storey link leads from the south aisle to the two-storey-and-attic rectangular presbytery.

The gabled west end has one-storey side porches with moulded arches and hoodmoulds and flanking tall buttresses. There are two two-light, mullioned windows with the hoodmoulds continued from the porches beneath a large six-light pointed window with a hoodmould rising to a canopied niche housing a white statue. The coped gable has an apex cross. The square tower is set back on the right. It has a single-light window beneath the ashlar belfry stage with pointed six-light openings with hoodmoulds beneath blind, cusped panelling, with corner gargoyles, a coped parapet, and a shingled, octagonal spirelet with a heart-shaped finial. The north aisle has three pairs of single-light windows in cavetto-moulded surrounds, tall, cusped lights to the gabled projections, and three pairs of cusped lights to the clerestory. The east end has a dated foundation stone and the apsidal chancel has crossed vesicae in octagonal panels on each face.

The interior has three-bay aisle arcades with cylindrical piers and double-chamfered arches, with a gallery at the west end. It has exposed roof trusses with arch braces and shaped tie beams.

The presbytery is orientated at right angles to the church. The south gable elevation has a door flanked by three-light windows in a single-storey projection, sashed three-light windows to the first floor, a sash window to the attic, and gable copings. The west side has mullioned and transomed windows, a corniced lateral stack and an end stack on the left. The link to the church has a pointed-arched doorway with side windows under a shared hoodmould beneath a gable with a statue in a niche.

Listing NGR: SK5021399459

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

334806

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Maye, R A, St Albans Church Denaby, (1986)
Architectural History Practice, Taking Stock (Diocese of Hallam), St Alban, Denaby Main, Doncaster. Abbreviated report available on Taking Stock - Catholic Churches of England and Wales (taking-stock.org.uk), (2015)

End of official list entry

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