Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Dormition of The Holy Mary Mother Of God, and associated boundary walls and gate piers, Kersal, Salford

Summary

A former Congregational Church sunday school of 1881, converted as a Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1954, of buff sandstone in a Decorated Gothic style.

Description

A former Congregational church sunday school of 1881, converted as a Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1954, by AH Davies-Colley.

MATERIALS: Kerridge sandstone with Alderley stone dressings, slate roof.

PLAN: standing to the west of Bury Old Road, orientated east-west, with aisled nave, apse and narthex. The entrance faces east; liturgical orientations are used below.

EXTERIOR: late Decorated Gothic style, with canted plinth and sill band. The east end is gabled with buttresses and a polygonal apse flanked by single-light windows with cusped heads, and with two cusped oculi above. The north aisle and apse also have cusped-head windows.

The north wall has aisle buttresses and ogee-head windows, with a clerestory of three, three-light cusped-head windows, and a north-east doorway with depressed-arch head, hoodmould with carved stops, and foliate carving in the tympana. To the right are double gables with a central buttress, and each with pointed window with tracery and stopped hoodmould. At the right is a polygonal projecting cellar stair. The south wall is similarly detailed and fenestrated, but with no doorway. The nave has a central hexagonal fleche in slate and lead.

The west end has a flat-roofed narthex with decorative parapet and north and south entrances detailed as the north-east doorway, flanked by the projecting polygonal stairs, and with the gabled west wall behind. Between the entrances are two-light windows, separated by a relief-carved datestone of 1881. Below this is the Holodomor memorial plaque of 1983 in black granite, with Tryzub (trident) symbol against a cross, ears of wheat, and inscription in Ukrainian and English, reading IN MEMORY/ OF SEVEN/ MILLION/ VICTIMS OF/ MOSCOW MADE/ FAMINE IN/ UKRAINE/ 1932-1933. The parapet above bears the relief inscription (now heavily worn), BOYS/ SUNDAY/ SCHOOL/ GIRLS. Between the entrances is a cellar area surrounded by original horned wrought-iron railings. The west wall has two pointed traceried windows, with a cusped oculus above.

INTERIOR: windows are leaded with some colour, but no stained glass. There is a western choir loft with a panelled front and the narthex contains stairs down to the cellar toilets. The nave roof is vaulted with hammerbeams braced on corbels and there are paintings of the Evangelists in the spandrels of the nave arcades. The sanctuary apse is decorated with wall paintings imitating gilded carvings and the iconostasis is modern, by Ukrainian craftsmen. The east wall is painted with Christ enthroned.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the stone boundary wall surrounds the east and north sides, with substantial chamfered and polygonal gate piers at the entrance.

History

The building now used as the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Dormition was built in 1881 as the Sunday school to the Congregational Church on Upper Park Road (which is listed in Grade II*, National Heritage List for England – NHLE – entry 1386187). The church had been opened in 1874, and its Decorated Gothic style was also selected for the school. This stood at the entrance to Broughton Park, a villa suburb laid out around 1845 by Rev Clowes, in which the church and the school were the first public buildings. Contemporary reports of the opening describe the school as ‘a fitting addition to the church with which it is connected’.

In the early C20 Manchester’s Ukrainian community of around 500 people was centred on Cheetham Hill. Catholic masses for Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian congregations were held in a chapel named St Casimir’s that was first established in a house, and then in a former Methodist chapel on Oldham Road in Collyhurst. From 1921 St Chad's Roman Catholic Church (NHLE 1208542) in Cheetham Hill hosted the Ukrainian congregation, in the church itself until 1933 and then until 1940 in the church school’s chapel, returning to the church after the school was bomb-damaged. In 1947 the Ukrainian Catholic parish was created. In 1954 the community bought the Broughton Sunday school, and it was converted into a Ukrainian Catholic church. As it was the first church owned by the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Great Britain, it was designated a ‘mother church’ (Sobor) by Archbishop Ivan Buczko, when he consecrated it on 29 August 1954. In 1970 it was visited by the Primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. Further Primates visited in 2003, 2011 and 2017. The church continued to be a hub of community life, hosting a Saturday school, Homin (male voice choir) and Plast (scouts), among other activities.

The conversion involved some alterations to the floorplan. The former school room became the nave, and the walls between the boys’ classrooms and library (south aisle), and the girls’ and infants’ classrooms (north aisle) were opened up, and the central wall dividing the narthex was removed. Wall paintings were also added, and an iconostasis installed. Pews were acquired from the former Wesleyan Methodist church across the road prior to its demolition in the 1970s. In 1983, to mark 50 years since the Holodomor, a memorial to its victims was added to the front of the church. (The Holodomor was a man-made famine claiming around seven million victims in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. It was the worst of a number of famines in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union in these years).

The first notable migration from Ukraine to England was in the late C19 and early C20 when several hundred people from western Ukraine settled in Manchester. Although most of them had either returned to Ukraine or relocated to the USA or Canada by the outbreak of the First World War, a small community remained in the city. After the Second World War around 35,000 more Ukrainians came to the United Kingdom, including many former soldiers and other displaced persons. Many were recruited into the European Volunteer Workers Scheme, which addressed labour shortages by offering paid employment in industry and agriculture. Most of these post-war migrants remained here, and they and later generations of their families formed Ukrainian communities in towns and cities across England, with concentrations in London, around Manchester, West Yorkshire and the East Midlands.

Further immigration occurred after the loosening of restrictions in (and later, the collapse of) the Soviet Union. By around 2005 there were estimated to be 100,000 Ukrainians in the United Kingdom. The ongoing conflict with Russia, which escalated in 2022, has brought (to date) around a further 160,000 refugees here. As Ukrainian communities have developed, they have often shared or adapted existing buildings to create spaces for worship, education, cultural celebrations and community activities. The two major Christian traditions - the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church - are represented by a number of buildings across the country. These have been adapted for purposes including the installation of an iconostasis (a wall of icon paintings which separates the nave from the altar).

Reasons for Listing

The Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Dormition, Broughton (Salford), a former Congregational Church sunday school of 1881, converted as a Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1954, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as an unusually elaborate example of Sunday school design, with good Gothic detailing and boundary walls with impressive stone piers;

* due to its little-altered appearance and arrangements, enhanced by sensitive re-ordering with wall paintings for use as a Ukrainian Catholic church, and by the addition of a Holodomor memorial to the facade.

Historic interest:
* as the Sobor (mother church) of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the UK, the church is an eloquent witness to the history of post-war Ukrainian migration in England, and the way in which the Ukrainian community has adapted redundant buildings of other denominations for worship.

Group value:
* for its strong functional, aesthetic and historical association with the Grade II* listed Congregational church that it served for over 50 years.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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