Church of St Wilfrid, Bedford Street, Hulme, Manchester
St Wilfred’s is the only example of A W N Pugin's work in Manchester. Nave of six bays of octagonal piers and double chamfered arches separating the aisles. A deep chancel and two side chapels. The design for the church was illustrated in Pugin's The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture published in 1841 and was described by Pugin:
It consists of a nave and two aisles with a tower at the north-west corner. Eight hundred persons may be seated in the body of the church, beside a considerable open space at the lower end. The eastern chapels are divided off, by open screens, from the aisles and also from the side arches of the chancel. The font is placed near the southern porch. At the south-eastern end is the Sacristy, communicating from the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, and fitted up with almories and all requisite fittings. Attached to the church, by a small cloister, is a large and commodious parsonage house for the residence of the clergy. The church, house, enclosure of ground and all internal fittings as well as every essential ornament for divine service, also architect's commission, will not exceed the cost of £5,000
Pugin frequently suffered insufficient funds for his churches and St Wilfred's was no exception. Faced with the situation where he was required to build a large church at small cost, Pugin produced a design of stark simplicity, far removed from contemporary churches. The exterior of the church is red brick with stone dressing and simple lancet windows, the bricks laid English bond. It was intended to have a tower and spire at the north-west corner but the tower was only completed to eaves level. Internally the open timber roof with its Queen post trusses showed a surprising economy in the use of timber. Almost nothing was spent on decoration except in the chancel and even there, some embellishment had to be postponed . The monies were all but spent before the internal plastering had begun and as a result, Pugin was still working on the decorations in 1849. However, by 1850 the walls and ceiling as well as the chancel arch were noted as being "beautifully decorated".
The drawings for the church were prepared in October and November 1839. In his earlier churches Pugin had made extensive use of the neo-Norman style but St Wilfred=s was one of his first essays in Early English. (Others produced about the same time included St Mary's Uttoxeter, the first scheme for the chapel at Ushaw and St Andrew's Cambridge). In The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture he wrote of his design:
The pointed style has decidedly the advantage on the score of materials. There is nothing artificial - no deception - nothing built up to make a show - no sham doors and windows to keep up equal numbers. .... It is impossible to see both sides of a building at once; how much more gratifying it is, therefore, to have two varied and beautiful elevations to examine than to see the same thing repeated
The church showed that Pugin had learned much in his first few months of practice. He had acquired sufficient confidence to discard his own earlier manner and was rapidly evolving a freer and more structurally expressive style. Lack of funds at St Wilfrid's had assisted the process. Unable to indulge in the opulence of Derby or Macclesfield, Pugin had been forced to concentrate solely on the compositional massing of the elements. It is perhaps fortunate that the proposed spire, illustrated in the frontispiece to An Apology was never built for it would have been an extravagance out of keeping with the general simplicity of the exterior. Although the design may now appear ordinary, it was, in many significant ways, highly original. Until St Wilfred=s almost every nineteenth century church in Manchester had been built of stone and was strictly symmetrical, still essentially Classical with Gothic dressings. At St Wilfrid=s, Pugin deliberately placed the tower at the end of an aisle rather than centrally on the west front. It was thus the first Gothic Revival church to depart from the axial principle and opened the way for irregular sites to be exploited with asymmetrical Gothic compositions. The separate parts, the nave aisles and south porch were separately articulated and the plan depended on some requirement of the ritual. AThe picturesque has become functional@. Phoebe Stanton commented on St Wilfrid's:
The church is remarkable, not because it is startling but rather because it now seems commonplace. The exterior is unpretentious. The pitch of the roofs, the adequate but undramatic buttresses which join the ground courses at the stone weathering, the English bond of the walls and the precise stonework of the details express an intelligent appreciation of the principles of medieval building. St Wilfrid=s was also the first church in which Pugin placed the tower at the end of an aisle rather than on the west front - an indication of a break from his earlier formula of rigid rectangular symmetry.
The interior was as modest as the exterior. There were no tall columns, no startling proportions. The chancel, which had all the required features, was designed to be richly appointed. Because the windows were small the church was dark but the contrast between the brilliant light of the eastern chamber and the dimness of the nave, with its delicate but beautiful wooden roof must have been effective. Pugin seems to have understood that St Wilfrid's was one of his finest buildings, despite its lack of ornateness. Within the means at his disposal, he had fulfilled every religious and aesthetic requirement he had laid down. In the struggle with circumstances, he had made a statement based on principles.
Despite his best endeavours, Pugin did not have absolute control of the internal decoration and fittings. Others sought to beautify and enrich the church in a manner which he deplored. He wrote to his patron, Lord Shrewsbury: "I was horrified on arriving at Manchester today to find that some pious persons had bought those horrid figures that came out of Your Lordship=s chapel, cast-iron brackets and all, and given them to be fixed in the church I have built at Manchester, St Wilfrids - with that French image of the Blessed Virgin for the Lady Chapel; it is dreadful. I will never advise sending anything to Bazaars again. Good gracious! The horrid things come back again: they pursue me like the Flying Dutchman. I thought I had seen the last of them, and they actually go into a church that should be perfect in its way. What to do, I know not."
