St Anthony

Introduction

St Anthony in Wythenshawe, within the Diocese of Shrewsbury, was built in 1959-60 by Adrian Gilbert Scott.

History

Before the church was built, Mass was celebrated in two green Nissen huts and then in the hall of Woodhouse Park's school. The church has a cruciform plan with nave, processional aisles, crossing tower, transepts and a polygonal apse.

Architecture and furnishings

The Stations of the Cross are carved limewood and inset into the Hornton-stone dado. The church has an integral Hornton-stone wall pulpit on the north side of the sanctuary arch. The church is built of narrow buff bricks with Portland-stone dressings and Lombardic-tile and copper roof coverings. The west end incorporates a giant parabolic arch with a deeply recessed entrance containing double doors set within a Portland-stone doorcase styled as a miniature frontispiece.

The crossing tower is octagonal with a polygonal copper-clad roof inset behind a parapet and surmounted by a cross finial. The interior has marble and tile floors and a high dado of Hornton stone throughout, except in the sacristy range. The interior features Scott's characteristic soaring camel-vaulted arches of three sizes rendered as parabolas, with the largest at the crossing. The church's original pendant lighting scheme and fixed pews survive.

The processional aisles terminate in the transepts where further parabolic-arched recesses in the east walls contain marble altars to St Anthony and the Holy Family and neo-Baroque painted reredoses from Italy. The sanctuary is accessed by a short flight of steps incorporating the coats of arms of Lisbon and Padua, cities associated with St Anthony. The main altar is set underneath a large dark-green and white marble baldacchino with a barrel-vaulted tessarae ceiling supported by columns with partly-gilded capitals. The narthex contains the former baptistery at the north end, which has a later partly-glazed timber screen and is used as a shop. A stone dog-leg stair at the south end of the narthex with an elegant bronzed-metal balustrade leads up to the west gallery above, which has pew bench seating.

Visiting

A first-class relic of Saint Carlo Acutis is available for veneration and personal prayer at St Anthony's Church. The church is surrounded by lawned grounds with a car parking area in front of the west end. The church is used by the local Keralan Indian community.