St. Michael and All Angels, Liverpool Road, Peel Green, Eccles

A CHURCH WITHIN THEIR MEANS – Plans for a permanent building for the church of St Michael and All Angels at Peel Green, Eccles have been approved, and it will be the first new permanent Anglican church to be completed in the Manchester area since the war. It will seat a congregation of 400, and its estimated cost is £18,000.The first plans for a church in Peel Green were ready in 1914, when the outbreak of war made it impossible to continue with them. After the war, when the value of the building fund had fallen considerably, the parish was able to buy a parsonage, and to build in 1926, the temporary church which is still in use. By 1939 new plans for a permanent church had been drawn up and the builder’s hut was actually on the site when war was declared. In the post-war world the problem of finding the money – nearly £40,000, it was thought would be the minimum – seemed to be insoluble until Mr Bernard Miller, a Liverpool architect, produced the present design and quoted a figure which, according to the rector, the Rev Guildford Thomson, the diocesan  authorities at first thought “too good to be true.” After detailed scrutiny, however, the plans were enthusiastically approved, and the parish was given a grant of £4,000 and a loan of £1,000 from diocesan funds. Costs have been kept down by building in brick with “plenty of windows,” and so saving on expensive heavy materials, and by sacrificing height. The highest part of the church will be 27 feet, but the interior decoration has been designed to give an illusion of height and distance looking towards the east. A terra-cotta figure of St Michael fighting the dragon brings the height of the tower to 40 feet. The building fund now stands at nearly £8,500 – the parish’s invested savings over many years. Another £5,000, in addition to the diocesan grant, is needed to complete the achievement of 46 years planning, and tomorrow the rector will be in church all day to receive gifts for the building fund. [Manchester Guardian 16 September 1955 page 5]

Reference    Manchester Guardian 16 September 1955 page 5 with illustration
Reference    Pevsner; Lancashire Manchester and the South East page 44