Sneaking up on a much-loved building ………

This is the former Congregational Church which has now been eclipsed by the high blocks of offices and apartments which surround it.

The Congregational Church, 2023

At the end of the last century and into the beginning of this one it was an impressive landmark in this part of the city, framed by the railway bridge, the canal network behind and the old Knott Mill Railway Station almost opposite.

Its spire rose upwards unchallenged by other buildings and always made me think it had a fine history.

My Pevsner tell me that it was built in "1858 by Edward Walters, Brick with stone dressing, a design of interpenetrating temple fronts with a tall slender Campanile attached to the s…..The Veneto-Byzantine style campanile has blind arcading to the first stage, with stone arcaded belfry stage and steep concave roof with lucarnes.  It was converted to recording studios in the 1980s and the basement is used as a café bar”.*

Since the Pevsner entry was written the owner of the studios, Pete Waterman sold it in 2006 and it is now a set of offices.

Glimpsed from Deansgate, 2023

Over the years I have photographed it from the road coming into the city centre, from the old canal side and from the platform of the Deansgate Castlefield tram stop.

Lost among the tower blocks, 2023

But yesterday I came across it while wandering around those little streets off the twisty bit of Deansgate.

These include Little Peter Street, Commercial Street and Hewitt Street.

And it is from Hewitt Street that I got the shot, with the railway bridge to my right and I rather like it.

That said this last image is the one most of us see and record.

The elegant church tower looks just an after thought set against the commercial skyline of the 21st century

Location; Hewitt Street and Deansgate

Picture; Sneaking up on the Congregational Church from Hewitt Street, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester, Hartwell Clare, Pevsner Architectural Guides, 2001

Remembering St George’s in Hulme

Now I have a fondness for St George’s Church in Hulme.

My old friend Jack Harker was christened there although I never asked him when.

That was the sort of question you never asked, partly because you were never sure what date he would give you and just because it never occurred to me.

So instead I shall focus on what G H Druffield said about the church in 1850.*

It was he said “a fine church [which] stands in the centre of a large piece of ground used for burials, situated in Chester-road, Hulme, exactly one mile from the Exchange.......... It has a lofty tower, surmounted with pinnacles; but like most churches in the town , it has no chancel.  

The tower contains a fine bell, weighing about 23 cwt, and an excellent clock, by Whitehurst of Derby.

The foundation stone was laid September 7th, 1826, and the church consecrated December 9th, 1828.

The interior of the church is handsomely fitted up, there are three galleries; that at the west and contains a very fine organ by Renm, with nearly 1,100 pipes.

There is a splendid tablet to the memory of the late Colonel Molineaux, of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars; together with many others of less note.  The cavalry regiments stationed at Hulme barracks which are nearly opposite.”

I wonder whether Colonel Molineaux’s tablet and the others of “less note" survived the church’s closure in 1984, its time as an empty shell and the conversion into flats in 2000 – 02.

Which just leaves me to thank Andy Robertson who took the pictures yesterday.

Location, Hulme, Manchester

Pictures; St Georges, 2016, from the collection of Andy Robertson

* G H Druffield, The Strangers Guide to Manchester, 1850