The Well Church
Lytham St Annes, Lancashire
Baptist church building built 1908 with Accrington brick in stretcher bond, with sandstone dressings and graduated Cumbrian slate roof with red ridge tiles in the Arts & Crafts style.
So let’s tell you how this church came to be so unusual.
The story of the White Church began at a meeting of the congregation of Lytham Congregational Church in 1899 with a suggestion that there should be a new church in the developing area of Fairhaven on land leased from the Clifton family of Lytham Hall.
The Elders decided that the church should be of ‘distinctive design’ as a change from the many gothic style churches already in the town. Four companies were chosen to submit designs for the church and the successful architects were Briggs, Wolstenholme and Thornley of Blackburn who won with a design that imitated some of the features of Byzantine architecture.
The outside of the church is faced using white Ceramo blocks made by the Middleton Brick and Tile Company of Leeds. They were the winners from the assessment of 13 building tenders received in 1911; the price of all of the blocks was £2,730.
The church windows were designed by Charles Elliot from ideas submitted by Luke Walmsley, a church Elder; they were made by Abbot & Co of Doncaster. They include such great reformers as John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, William Tindale, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, George Fox, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, John Wesley, David Livingstone and William Carey. Until the church sanctuary was completed in 1912, 16 of the ‘Reformer’ panels were located in the church hall.
The church hall was completed late in1903 and opened on May 4th 1904; it can accommodate 120 people and has two kitchens for food preparation. Fund raising continued and the main church building was completed and opened on October 17th 1912. It is octagonal in shape, designed to seat 486 but now seats 300.