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St Peter's Church, Westleigh
St Peter's Church, Westleigh
	St Peter's Church, Westleigh, from the southeast
	St Peter's Church, Westleigh Location in Greater Manchester
	53°29′54″N 2°32′15″W / 53.4984°N 2.5376°W
OS grid reference	SD 644,003
Location	Firs Lane, Westleigh, Leigh, Greater Manchester
Country	England
Denomination	Anglican
Website	St Peter Westleigh
History
Status	Parish church
Dedication	Saint Peter
Consecrated	1881
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II*
Designated	27 July 1987
Architect(s)	Paley and Austin
Architectural type	Church
Style	Gothic Revival
Groundbreaking	1879
Completed	1881
Construction cost	£7,000
Specifications
Materials	Brick with sandstone dressings, Slate roof
Administration
Province	York
Diocese	Manchester
Archdeaconry	Salford
Deanery	Leigh
Parish	St Peter Westleigh
Clergy
Vicar(s)	Revd J M Cooper

St Peter's Church is in Firs Lane, Westleigh, a district of Leigh, Greater Manchester, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Leigh, the archdeaconry of Salford, and the diocese of Manchester.^[1] The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building.^[2] It was designed by the Lancaster architects Paley and Austin. The architectural historians Pollard and Pevsner describe it as "one of their most radical and thrilling churches".^[3]

History

Building of the church started in 1879 and it was completed and consecrated in 1881. It cost £7,000 (equivalent to £890,000 as of 2023),^[4] and provided seating for 460 people.^[3]^[5]

Architecture

The church is constructed in red brick with Runcorn sandstone dressings.^[6] It has a slate roof. Its plan consists of a three-bay nave with a north aisle and a south porch, a two-bay chancel with a north vestry, and a central tower. Along the sides of the church are two-light flat-headed windows with Decorated tracery. The porch is gabled and has a niche for a statue above the doorway. The tower has buttresses, a three-light transomed window, and flat-headed bell openings. At the top of the tower is a parapet with an ashlar frieze below it, and a pyramidal roof. The east and west windows have five and four transomed lights respectively.^[2]

Inside the church the arcade between the nave and north aisle is carried on circular sandstone columns with moulded capitals. The stone reredos contains four niches with statues. The alabaster pulpit is large and elaborate; it was formerly in Manchester Cathedral. The stained glass in the east window dates from 1949 and is by Abbott and Company of Lancaster.^[3] The font incorporates polygonal shafts of green marble.^[6]

References

^ St Peter, Westleigh, Church of England, retrieved 7 September 2011
^ ^a ^b Historic England, "Church of St Peter, Westleigh (1068481)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 7 September 2011
^ ^a ^b ^c Pollard & Pevsner 2006, p. 230.
^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017), "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", MeasuringWorth, retrieved 7 May 2024
^ Brandwood et al. 2012, p. 231.
^ ^a ^b Brandwood et al. 2012, pp. 115–116.

Bibliography

Brandwood, Geoff; Austin, Tim; Hughes, John; Price, James (2012), The Architecture of Sharpe, Paley and Austin, Swindon: English Heritage, ISBN 978-1-84802-049-8
Pollard, Richard; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2006), Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10910-5