Our Lady and All Saints Parish Church

Introduction

Our Lady and All Saints Parish Church in Stourbridge, in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, was built in 1863-4 by Edward Welby Pugin, with a tower added by G.H. Cox in 1886.

Architecture and furnishings

The church has an 8-bay nave, chancel, north and south aisles, and a tower at the west end of the north aisle. The interior features a lofty 8-bay nave with clerestory and 7-bay arcades with alternating grey and pink polished granite piers. The stained glass windows of 1875 were by Hardman.

The stained glass windows in the Lady Chapel and St Joseph's Chapel, featuring the Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt, were installed in 1876. A tenor bell, cast by John Taylor of Loughborough, was donated by Mr and Mrs H. James and restored to use in 1988. The Stations of the Cross, originally painted wooden panels, have been replaced by mosaics.

The church is built of red brick with stone dressings and has steeply pitched Welsh slate roofs with bands of grey tiles and stone coping to the gable ends with stone crosses at the apexes. The church is in Gothic style with Geometric window tracery. The church is aligned north-south. The exterior has north and south aisles with 2-light Geometric tracery windows with buttresses between and a tall nave with cusped circular clerestory windows.

The chancel has tall and narrow north and south windows with Geometric tracery, a large rose east window, and a vestry in the angle with the north aisle. The nave roof is elaborate with arch scissor-braces, high collars and collars to the common-rafters. The chancel roof has painted panels. There is a richly carved stone reredos of 1875.

There is a wooden gallery in the 8th bay at the west end with an organ. The church has a pulpit and intact seating.

The first stained glass was installed in 1875, the work of the Hardman Studios in Birmingham, which provided the rest of the stained glass until the 1930s. The mosaics on either side of the altar front represent two traditional symbols of the Eucharist: on the right the pelican, and on the left the Lamb of God. The carving in the middle of the altar front is an Annunciation scene with the Angel Gabriel on the left and Mary on the right, the lilies in the centre being symbolic of Mary's purity. The dramatic stencil work on the walls of the sanctuary was introduced towards the end of the last century.

The murals in the nave and sanctuary were painted over in the 1960s. The originally plain windows in the side aisles, the chapels, the East rose window and the West window over the choir have all been filled with stained glass. Friends from Kidderminster joined the choir in supplementing the Harvington choir for the annual Pilgrimage Mass.

Parish life

The Music Group has a contemporary style and includes wind, brass, strings and percussion instruments with guitars. The parish provides visitation to the sick and the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick for those unable to celebrate Mass due to illness, age or being house-bound. The church car park is accessed only via Union Street, not from New Road.