St James with St Clement
Moss Side, Greater Manchester
A long established community church with a warm welcome and a key archive to the area's history.
Holy Name church is a fine Gothic revival building by Joseph Hansom and son 1869-71. Pevsner describes it as 'one of their finest buildings'. The tower by Adrian Gilbert Scott was built in 1928. It received Grade I listing in 1989 having been Grade II* listed in 1963.
The church is constructed of brick faced externally with coursed sandstone and internally with buff terracotta tiles made locally by Gibbs & Canning. The tower incorporates reinforced concrete within the predominantly stone faced brick structure. The fine organ by William Hill remains in use. The main body of the church is rib vaulted with hollow polygonal terracotta blocks, much lighter than stone, which makes the church unusually spacious.
As Pevsner put it 'the interior is overwhelming in airiness, because all the piers are extremely slim so that space can flow freely'. The quality of the French influenced architecture, unusual construction technique and its 'daring structural design' has combined to created arguably the most significant 19th century church building in the north west.
Holy Name was built by the Jesuits at the request of the first Bishop of Salford for the growing Irish immigrant communities. It remained a busy parish ministering to 3000 souls for over 100 years. Following housing clearances and population dispersal to new suburbs in the 1960s, the church ceased to be a parish in 1994 and served instead the university population as the church of the Manchester Universities Catholic chaplaincy, still served by the Jesuits.
The cultural contribution of Holy Name centres around music. Its 1871 choir included the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, who as a Jesuit priest later preached here. In 1895 the funeral of Sir Charles Hallé, founder of Manchester's symphony orchestra, filled the church and streets with 'vast crowds'.
Mancunian author Anthony Burgess described the role Holy Name played in his years as a confused and questioning believer; and the church is name checked in The Smiths hit song Vicar in a Tutu.