St Mary
Manchester, Greater Manchester
In 1794, the Roman Catholic Church sought to tackle Manchester's deepest troubled area on a site crowded in by intensive poor quality housing on land which had so recently been open meadow and grazing pasture.
The tower marks the centre of the city, and surveyors used to measure distances to other locations from a benchmark that is still visible at the tower door.
The church is the third oldest building in Manchester and was designed by Derbyshire architect John Barker in the Classical style. Its original simple interior, with plain glass windows and the altar placed behind the three tiered pulpit, was a reaction against the High Church worship practised at the Collegiate Church (now Manchester Cathedral), the centre of the Jacobite cause.
Lady Bland was a staunch supporter of the Low Church and the Whigs, and so she provided most of money for building a new church to rival the Collegiate Church. By the time renovations were carried out in the 19th century, Jacobite-Whig tensions had ceased, so the altar again took centre stage and fine stained glass was installed. Incendiary bombs in World War II were followed by general decay in the church fabric. In 1996, the windows, especially at gallery level, were caught in the blast of an IRA bomb, and were badly damaged.
Now recent renovations have restored the church to its former magnificence, and many find it more impressive than Manchester Cathedral.