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

• Historic England Listing
• 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

• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)