Description

SUNDERLAND

NZ3956SE RYHOPE ROAD 920-1/22/187 (West side) 08/05/50 Christ Church including attached vestry and verger's house (Formerly Listed as: RYHOPE ROAD (West side) Christ Church)

GV II

Parish church. 1862-64. By James Murray of Coventry; attached vestry and verger's house c1877 by JC Cundall of Leamington. Snecked rock-faced limestone with ashlar plinth and dressings of coarse-grained sandstone; roof pale grey slate, perhaps Lakeland, with stone copings; stone spire. Chancel with S chapel and NE tower, aisled nave with transepts and N porch, and vestry and cottage attached to W end of S aisle. Style of c1300 with cusped lancets, roundels and geometric tracery. EXTERIOR: large E gable has 5-light window with big cinquefoil under dripmould; sill string continues round angle buttresss with gabled niches; gabled S chancel chapel has 3-light window. 3-stage tower has roll-moulded arch on nookshafts to E door under crocketed ogee canopy, 2 slender lancets in tall second stage, and half-octagonal N stair turret with lancets and hipped roof; belfry stage has corner shafts and symbols of Evangelists above 2-light louvred openings; corbel table with angle gargoyles; high broach spire with lucarnes and angle spirelets. Gabled transepts have 3 lancets below roundel. Similar roundels paired in clerestory between shallow buttresses; 3-light aisle windows; head-stopped dripmould over moulded arch on nookshafts with crocket capitals in gabled north porch. Sill strings and alternate-block jambs to openings. Short corridor from NW has lancets and leads to vestry with one high storey, 5 mullion windows and high-pitched roof; similar window on each floor of attached cottage with gable to front, the upper an attic in the gable; set-back left square stair tower has boarded door in double-chamfered arch, and coped set-backs reducing it to octagonal turret with conical roof; tall chimney at rear of cottage roof. INTERIOR of church 5-bay arcade has double-chamfered arches on round piers with crocket capitals; similar chancel arch on shafts; scissor-braced roof on corbelled wall-posts. Chancel has shallow N recess, S organ chamber, carved stone reredos. Perpendicular chancel screen; Gothic stone pulpit with green marble shafts stands on 6 piers; alabaster font in Romanesque style. High quality glass includes E window of 1864 by Morris & Co., all scenes except Sermon on the Mount by Morris & Burne Jones; W window and transepts have c1866 glass in bright primary colours; N aisle, E-W, windows signed Alex Gibb & Co., 109 Bloomsbury, London; Atkinson Bros, Newcastle; C Baguley, Newcastle; S aisle also fine glass including the second by Kempe, commemorating Charles Kitson d.1881, and the first c1882. The site was bought from Edward Backhouse of Ashburne House (qv), who insisted there should be a good spire. Among wealthy men who contributed to the cost of building was James Hartley, glassmaker. (Buildings of England: Pevsner (revised Williamson): County Durham: Harmondsworth: 1983-: 451; Corfe T and Milburn G: Buildings and Beliefs: Sunderland: 1984-: 14).

Listing NGR: NZ3976556019

External Links

• Wikidata Q26504714

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Recommended Books

• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey