Description

MANCHESTER

SJ89NE GORTON LANE, Gorton North 698-1/5/694 (North side) 18/12/63 Roman Catholic Church of St Francis and monastic building attached to church (Formerly Listed as: GORTON LANE, Gorton (North side) Roman Catholic Church of St Francis, Monastic building attached to Church)

II*

Roman Catholic church, with attached monastic building. 1864-72, by Edward Welby Pugin, for the Order of St Francis. CHURCH: Red brick with dressings of sandstone and blue brick, steeply-pitched slate roof. Late C13 Gothic style. Nave on north-south axis with east and west aisles, south narthex, and north chancel with polygonal apse. The 13-bay nave and 2-bay chancel with its apse form a single tall narrow vessel, the nave having buttresses which form 13 very narrow bays with corbel tables, the buttresses banded, and each bay containing a 2-light window with a multifoil in the head; the chancel has larger but similar windows and unusual coupled dormers with multifoils; and the apse has 3-light traceried windows with multifoils in the head. The aisles have buttresses and 3 or 4 lancets to each bay. By contrast with this simple regularity, the gabled south front makes a very elaborate demonstration of Gothic features and decoration with strong vertical emphasis: 3 flying buttresses to the full height of the nave, with polychrome bands and 4 diminishing stone offsets to each, the outer finished with gablets and corniced octagonal shafts, and the centre carried up to a large stepped-out and canopied Crucifixus attached to the front of a stepped pedestal from which rises a banded and pilastered bellcote with a spirelet. The bases of the buttresses are pierced by a 4-bay narthex which has 2-centred arched moulded stone doorways linked by an impost band carried round the buttresses, and a pierced stone parapet with a pierced gablet breaking through. Above the narthex, the nave has 2 very tall elaborately moulded 2-light windows with geometrical tracery and banded extradoses, deeply-raked stone sills and hoodmoulds from which rise pedestals to canopied statues; and the aisles have short 2-centred moulded stone arches each containing 4 small multifoils. MONASTIC BUILDING: cloister attached to east side of church, and returned along front of very plain 3-storey range on north side of garden, which has small widely-spaced segmental-headed sashed windows to the 1st and 2nd floors, ridge chimneys, and a bellcote at the west gable. Unocuppied at time of survey.

Listing NGR: SJ8766296872

External Links

• Gorton Monastery at Wikipedia
• Gorton Monastery official website
• Wikidata Q5586940

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Gwent/Monmouthshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Wales)
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  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version