Church of All Saints and Martyrs, Langley, West Middleton, Rochdale

Summary

Church, chapel and church hall, 1963-1964 designed by Albert Hilton Walker of Leach, Rhodes & Walker of Manchester. The Langley Cross was designed by Geoffrey Clarke.

Description

Church, chapel and church hall, 1963-1964 designed by Albert Hilton Walker of Leach, Rhodes & Walker of Manchester. The Langley Cross was designed by Geoffrey Clarke.

MATERIALS
Narrow, hard red brick to the external walls and reinforced concrete roof structures and dressings; a copper-covered roof to the church and sheet roofing to the church hall. Beige, fair-faced rustic brick to the interior.

PLAN
The church is aligned north-east, south-west, but for the description lthat follows liturgical compass points will be used.

The building has a large coffin-shaped nave and sanctuary with a pointed west end baptistery. A slightly smaller coffin-shaped church hall is joined at right-angles to the north side of the sanctuary. On the south side of the sanctuary, is a single-storey choir transept and attached single-storey and basement vestry. Flanking the baptistery on the south-west side is a glazed corridor connecting to a small polygonal chapel and on the north-west side is a projecting entrance porch. Attached at the west end of the church hall are two single-storey former flats, a kitchen and lavatories.

EXTERIOR
The building is constructed in narrow, hard red bricks; the church and chapel are built in English garden wall bond (3:1) and the church hall and ancillary buildings are built in stretcher bond.

The church roof is covered in patinated copper sheeting which covers the guttering and towards the west end is a slender steel-framed flèche partially covered with fibreglass with a bell (non-operational) and a simple Latin cross finial. The west end faces the road and is pointed, like the prow of a ship. It has a full-height, zig-zag angled window with a grid-like concrete frame glazed with panes of graduated shades of French amber and clear glass. The angled brick elevations flanking the west window both have a deep, pointed-arch concrete lintel and shallow window, above the chapel corridor on the right-hand side and the entrance porch on the left-hand side. The nave walls then change angle to slope in towards the east end. The nave is lit by a large, full-height window on both sides. The concrete grid frames are slightly recessed into the brick walls and have clear glazing. The concrete ring-beam is visible externally above the windows. The south elevation has patterned fenestration above the transept choir and vestry comprising recessed vertical lines of narrow clear lights alternating with individual narrow vertical lights with coloured glazing. The north elevation has similarly patterned fenestration above the church hall roof. The east end has two slightly-angled planes and is blind.

The south-west polygonal chapel stands at an angle with a glazed corridor linking it to the church. The chapel has similar patinated copper sheeting to the roof. The outermost, east end is fully fenestrated with a full-height concrete grid frame of two angled planes with amber, blue, green and clear glazing and an apron of textured panels. The blind, brick side walls are angled in towards the corridor at the rear. The corridor is glazed to both sides, with glazed double doors facing the road.

The south choir transept is slightly inset from the vestry and the flat vestry roof is stepped down. The west elevation of the choir transept has a full-width glazed screen with timber grid frame (replacement) and the east elevation is blind. The vestry has a concrete plinth. The west elevation has a bricked-up horizontal basement window and a full-height window on the right-hand side which has been partially blocked, leaving a ground-floor window with a concrete lintel and multi-pane vertical glazing in a timber frame. The outer, south elevation has a small, blocked basement window and a partially blocked full-height opening with a concrete lintel containing a door and over light. The east elevation has a full-height window with a concrete lintel and multi-pane vertical glazing in a timber frame.

The church hall has a lower roof, covered in a pale grey roof sheeting and the north end is wrapped around by the flat-roofed, single-storey former flats, kitchen and lavatories. The west elevation has two full-height windows with multi-pane timber frames. The adjacent south elevation of the flat-roofed block has a recessed doorway with timber double doors with vertical strip glazing. Adjacent is a horizontal rectangular three-light window. The east elevation of the church hall has a double fire door. The other elevations of the flat-roofed block have large horizontal rectangular windows with concrete sills; most are presently boarded up.

The small north-west entrance porch has a flat roof and glazed timber double doors and side lights. It is reached by a wide flight of steps.

INTERIOR
The interior walls of the church are faced in beige brick, with a rendered east wall, painted dull blue-green, and timber floors. The sanctuary and choir transept floors are raised up a step, with simple timber altar rails. The nave and sanctuary share a slightly-pitched roof with a substantial concrete ring-beam cast in-situ with a geometrical pattern of intersecting concrete crossbeams. Between the crossbeams are recessed blue wood-wool insulation slabs.

The interior is dominated by the 11 metre tall sanctuary cross, known as the Langley Cross, designed by the sculptor Geoffrey Clarke. Designed with a strong spiritual element, the sculpture sought to engage the viewer and provoke reflection through imagery that was both personal and universally accessible. Cast in aluminium, the relief sculpture comprises textured and shaped panels giving the effect of wooden slats with projecting square nail heads, evoking Joseph's trade as a carpenter. The lower tapering shaft can be seen as a ladder with five rungs or footholds, symbolic perhaps of Jacob’s ladder or the five wounds of Christ, ascending heavenward to God, envisaged as a central open roundel encompassing a Latin cross. Shaped transverse arms radiate out, the right-hand side partially cradling a circular disc, or earth, the terrestial balanced by the celestial roundel. The cross apex reaches up into the roof structure, overlapping the concrete crossbeams and it stands on a high base enabling it to be seen above the mahogany altar, which itself is raised on two shallow steps of blue brick and concrete. On the left-hand side of the altar is a blue brick, concrete and timber pulpit and attached ambo. A flight of five steps leads to the church hall on the left-hand side (now partitioned off by a recessed, inserted wall). The sanctuary opens into the choir transept on the right-hand side. On its west side wall is a crucifixion painted in an expressionist manner on a vestment-shaped canvas by Robert Mann, lecturer in painting at De Salle College of Education, Manchester. At its rear is a plain timber door opening into the vestry.

To each side is a cantilevered concrete gallery, painted white, above which is the patterned fenestration. That to the left-hand side supports the pipe organ.

The nave is lit by the two full-height windows with plain glazing and the baptistery, which is raised a step, is lit by the amber and clear glass of the angled west window. The concrete font is a curved, rectangular shape on a cruciform pedestal which stands on a square, black granite base inscribed with gilded rays. The flanking entrances from the north-west porch and south-west chapel corridor have similar infill, timber and glazed screens with double doors with vertical strip glazing.
The chapel corridor is tiled with square, cream tiles. The entrance to the church is up a flight of timber steps with balustrades of slender, metal balusters with wide, timber panel hand rails.

The chapel has similar beige brick walls, timber floor with a step up to the sanctuary, and roof with concrete wall plates and crossbeams. Affixed to a side wall are the narrow brass plaques of the First World War memorial originally attached to arcade piers in Holy Trinity, Rochdale. These record all the many names of those from the parish who fought in the war, those who did not return inscribed in red. The particularly unusual feature is that they are listed by the street from which they came.

The church hall has beige brick walls and a timber floor. The roof is hidden by a later suspended ceiling. The former flats have plain timber doors with simple timber architraves.

History

In June 1951 Bishop Greer of the Diocese of Manchester wrote in the Diocesan Leaflet of his vision to erect several dual-purpose buildings that could be used both for public worship and, with the use of appropriate screens, as church halls. The sites, which would also have new vicarages, were to be funded from the Bishop’s New Churches Appeal, with an anticipated cost of £600,000. The Church of All Saints’ and Martyrs’ was one of these churches, begun in 1963 to serve the large local authority overspill housing estate of Langley, built on the edge of Middleton following slum clearance in the Collyhurst area of Manchester in the 1950s. The architects practice chosen was Leach, Rhodes & Walker of Manchester. The concrete-framed, brick design was by partner Albert Hilton Walker (1902-1966), who also sat on the Diocesan Reorganisation Committee. The finished building cost £68,300 and the church was dedicated on All Saints’ Day 1964.

Walker designed a church for a large population who would not necessarily worship regularly on a Sunday, but who would require a large enough space to celebrate Christmas and Easter, as well as marking major personal events such as marriage and death. His design had a large church with a slightly smaller church hall joined at right-angles to the sanctuary. The main nave was designed to accommodate 350 worshippers and an extra 300 worshippers could be seated in the church hall when a separating screen was drawn back. The emphasis of both spaces was the sanctuary, which was kept uncluttered of liturgical screens, choirstalls or other furniture which would impede the worshippers’ view of the altar. Walker himself designed the simple sanctuary furniture, which consists of a combined concrete and timber ambo and pulpit, and a mahogany altar raised on two concrete steps. The vicar at the time remarked that this arrangement '… is good for command of the service and for the attention and audibility of the congregation.' There was also a teak bishop’s chair, matching choirstalls and servers’ bench set in the choir gallery and timber pews in the nave of varying lengths to fit its angled shape. The wooden furnishings were supplied by Jacksons of Farnworth, Greater Manchester and the pulpit and ambo, altar steps and concrete font in the baptistery were supplied by Girlingstones of Leeds, a firm specialising in the construction of pre-cast concrete products. A pipe organ was installed in a cantilevered gallery on the north side of the sanctuary. The instrument was built in 1962 by the highly-regarded organ building firm of Rushworth and Dreaper of Liverpool. The 'unit extension' instrument (where a greater number of stops were derived from fewer ranks of pipes) was a type for which the firm were particularly noted. The detached mahogany console was located on the ground floor with the choir in the transept opposite.

The church interior was dominated by the coeval 'Langley Cross' set against the east wall of the sanctuary and designed by the notable post-war sculptor Geoffrey Clarke (1924-2014), who collaborated on a number of Leach, Rhodes and Walker churches. The cast aluminium cross cost £1,500. Measuring 11 metres high by almost 6 metres wide it is said to be his largest commission.

Clarke had entered the Royal College of Art, London, in 1948 after serving in the RAF. He represented the RCA at the Festival of Britain in 1951 and in 1952 exhibited at the Venice Biennale with other 'Young British Sculptors' including Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick. By this time he was working on a series of commissions for Basil Spence’s new Coventry Cathedral (consecrated in 1962), which included three of the cathedral’s ten nave windows, the cross and candlesticks for the high altar, a vast aluminium crown of thorns, and the Flying Cross, placed on the fleche by helicopter . At the same time Clarke had collaborated with Albert Hilton Walker, designing stained glass for Leach Rhodes and Walker’s 1957 All Saints’ Church, Stretford. In 1958 Clarke developed a new method of casting for his sculptures, which he used for the Langley Cross. Rather than using the traditional sculpting method of modelling in clay and casting in bronze or iron, he pioneered a more rapid and direct approach using expanded polystyrene (developed commercially in the United States in 1954) and turned to using aluminium. After carving the polystyrene with a heated instrument, he packed it into fine sand in the small studio foundry he had set up in a barn beside his Suffolk home. When the molten aluminium was poured in the polystyrene vaporised and the aluminium hardened to take the same shape and texture of the polystyrene in a modern adaptation of the 'lost wax' method. Clarke was made a Royal Academician in 1975 and examples of his work are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery and the V&A.

More recently the church hall has been separated off from the main church with a wall replacing the original screen and the original roof covering has been replaced. The two curates’ flats are now used as church offices and for storage. The original choir window has also been replaced.

In early 2021 a faculty was granted to relocate a very unusual and significant First World War memorial from the redundant Church of Holy Trinity, Archer Park, Rochdale (Grade II, National Heritage List for England: 1417026) to the chapel at All Saints' and Martyrs.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of All Saints and Martyrs, of 1963 to 1964 by Albert Hilton Walker of Leach, Rhodes & Walker of Manchester, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a carefully designed post-war Anglican church, intended both to be flexible and presenting a traditional church form in the manner of the recently completed Coventry Cathedral to its newly relocated congregation;

* the church has a sense of visual drama in the prow-like west end facing the road with its full-height, zig-zag angled window and the geometrical pattern of intersecting concrete crossbeams to the interior;

* it echoes Coventry Cathedral’s emphasis upon showcasing the best quality modern artwork to enrich the building to the glory of God with the Langley Cross encompassing the full height of the east end, whose impact and quality dominates the interior;

* the Langley Cross is an important piece in Geoffrey Clarke's oeuvre, epitomising his distinctive character, its quality and scale also marking it as an important post-war ecclesiastical commission;

* the interior is further enhanced by sanctuary fixtures and fittings designed by the architect and a contemporary high-quality pipe organ by Rushworth and Dreaper of Liverpool.

Historic interest:
* Geoffrey Clarke is a notable post-war sculptor, who sealed his reputation with his commission for artworks at Coventry Cathedral and has pieces in a number of other post-war listed buildings as well as listed public artworks;

* the relocated First World War memorial in the chapel is a poignant reminder of the tragic impact of world events upon an individual community and is particularly unusual in listing the men by the street from which they came;

* the dual-pupose building is a good example of church provision designed to practically accommodate fluctuating porst-war congregations both for everyday worship and significant church services.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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