St Paul’ s Church. Victoria Avenue, Blackley

The new church of St Paul, which the Bishop of Manchester will consecrate today, is the most outstanding example of the new movement in church design. We have moved a very long way from the old days of the mediaeval revival, when any church was necessarily Gothic in style, and nearly always a stereotyped kind of Gothic at that. ….   The new church at Blackley, which has been designed by Messrs Isaac Taylor and Young of Manchester, is original and fresh in its handling, but in its details it relies upon a really sound use of Renaissance motifs. Only about half the church is at present erected, but as one looks at it from the east end one can realise something of the excellent group of buildings which is intended. The chancel and transepts build up very impressively, mostly as a mass of honest brickwork. The rectory is linked to the church by a low building consisting chiefly of a side chapel, which gives scale to the mass of the east end. The nave is only a fragment of what is intended and will eventually stretch out westward to join a proposed parish hall. The brickwork is of very pleasant sand faced bricks with stonework sparingly used to mark points of emphasis. It is in the interior, however, that the real distinction of this building can be realised. It has the conventional nave and aisle, chancel and transepts but these elements are handled with originality and simplicity, and the plain barrel vault, the beautiful sweep of the curves of the apse, the absence of merely conventional ornament; and what must be described as a real mastery in technique have produced an interior which is entirely satisfying. Such ornament as is used is confined to the altar and other fittings, and the very simplicity of the church gives added emphasis to these points of richness. [Manchester Guardian 12 December 1931 page 12]

Pevsner quotes a Mr Anson “the architects let themselves go on the furniture”. (Pevsner page 316)

Foundation       Stone laid 5 Oct 1930 by Bishop of Manchester.
Consecration    12 December 1931

Reference    Manchester Guardian 13 September 1930 page 20 with illustration
Reference    Manchester Guardian 12 December 1931 page 12 – consecration