Wild Life Hotel…… February in Didsbury

Location; Parsonage Gardens, Didsbury

Picture; Wildlife Hostel, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The lost churches of Manchester….... no.1 ..... St Mary’s

I suppose I should have made the connection between that open patch of green sandwiched between Deansgate and St Mary’s Parsonage and a lost church.

Parsonage Gardens, 2020

It of course all there in the names, ……. Parsonage Gardens, St Mary’s Parsonage, and St Mary’s Gate.

From which you can deduce the church was St Mary’s.  It lasted just 134 years, which is longer than some Manchester churches, but a mere minnow when compared to St Ann’s its near neighbour, which will soon be celebrating its 309th birthday.

St Mary's Church, 1890

And both were the new kids on the block back in the 18th century when compared to the Cathedral, bits of which date back to 1422, replacing an earlier church which was possibly Anglo Saxon.

I have Barry Collison to thank for posting a short article from the Manchester Weekly Times, dated Saturday January 4th, 1890, announcing the closure of St Mary’s,  which had been “deserted by its congregation, abandoned by the clergy and left to decay, [and was] an eye sore to everyone”.*

Its church plate and what was left of its congregation was transferred to St Ann’s which had already attracted many of the former worshippers.

And part of the reason was what had once been surrounded by prosperous residents had steadily moved out as the area increasingly became a centre for industry and commerce.

Back in the 1790s South Parade had been home to the wealthy Thomas Walker who was for a while the Borough reeve of Manchester, and alternated between the family town house and their home in the countryside at Barlow Hall in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

St Mary's Church, 1794

South Parade looked out on to the church, which was the scene of an outrageous attack on his property by a Church and King mob objecting to his support for the French Revolution.  

The attacks lasted two days, with the mob breaking windows on the first day and threatening to burn the house down on the second, and injuring Mr. Walker in the process.  

By all accounts it was a close run thing.  The civil authorities did nothing, his children were forced to escape through the back garden and the crowd was only driven off after he discharged a pistol.

Little over a century later the church “wore an aspect of woeful melancholy.  Around it are warehouses and offices full of life, and busy drays or carts wind about the surrounding streets incessantly; the church, majestic in its proportions, remains silent and useless.  The thickly strewn gravestones that completely flag the church year only emphasis its deserted condition by hinting at a different past”.**

St Mary's Church, 1851

But even 40 years earlier H. Duffield in his guide to Manchester, could find little to say about the place, remarking that “it cannot be said to belong to any order of architecture”, and confined himself to a short description of the interior.  There was “a gallery round three sides of the church, and a good organ.”***

And by the time he was writing his piece the church was surrounded an all sides by commercial and industrial properties, with just a handful of houses.

All of which was in direct contrast to the scene in 1769, when Harrop’s Mercury carried an advert for a garden “to the west end of St Mary’s Church [which ran] down to the river, where in is contained a Flower garden, Orchard and shrubbery, with a large quantity of Gooseberries and Currant berry Trees, Strawberries, Fruit trees around the walls, a Neat Summer House, with two rooms papered and Grates fixed up in each Room, which goes along the River, lying open to the fields on that side which makes the Air good and the Garden pleasant”****

Interior of St Mary's Church, 1889

This was a time when sources referred to the river running “pure and bright, and many fishes could be seen from the fields that fringed its banks”.*****

Today the river runs a little cleaner than it did when St Mary’s closed, and residential properties have returned around Parsonage Gardens.

And that is a good point to finish, leaving me just to say this is the first of the series, and along the way we will include synagogue’s mosques, and temples.

Location; Manchester

St Mary's Church 1890

Pictures; Parsonage Gardens. 2020 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, St Mary’s Church, 1895, S.L. Coulhurst, m83196, interior of St Mary’s, 1889,  m70960, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass St Mary’ Church, 1794, Green’s map of Manchester, the church in 1851, from Adshead's map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and St Mary's Church, 1890, Manchester Weekly Times, courtesy Barry Collison

*St Mary’s Church, Manchester, Manchester Weekly Times, Saturday January 4th, 1890

** ibid, St Mary’s Church

***The Strangers Guide to Manchester, H. Duffield, 1850.

**** quoted in Old Manchester, Two Glimpses of the Parsonage, Manchester Guardian, May 13, 1927.

*****ibid, in Old Manchester