St Edward's, Whitley Bay

Introduction

St Edward's in Whitley Bay, in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, was built in 1926-8 to the 1921 designs of Stienlet & Maxwell in a Modernised Romanesque style. The church was opened by Bishop Thorman on 23rd April 1928.

History

St Edward was designed in 1921 by Pascal J. Stienlet & J. C. Maxwell of Newcastle, and built by Henry Kelly & Co. A painted Descent from the Cross was added to the west-facing panel of the organ case in 1945 as a memorial to parishioners and members of the Tyneside Irish Regiment who fell in the First World War.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of rusticated purplish/dark red Ravenhead bricks with darker brick dressings and dark red roof tiles, with red sandstone dressings to main entrances. The church has a short apsidal sanctuary with an external ambulatory, tall transepts and a crossing with an octagonal lantern over, and an aisled nave with a west narthex, a south porch, and a later, north narthex. The re-ordered sanctuary has three steps to the forward marble altar, which incorporates re-used elements from the original high altar. The original organ is housed within the north transept, whose west-facing panel has a First World War memorial in the form of a painted Descent from the Cross; to the right of this is the Roll of Honour.

The narrow aisled nave has a full compliment of original benches separated by a central aisle; the arcades are supported on square columns with moulded capitals, and affixed to the aisle walls are The Stations of the Cross. The exterior features a Lombard frieze and dentilled cornice, with recessed round-arched openings, corner corbels, and raised brick crosses in relief. The apse has five small round windows below a semi-conical roof. The transepts have two tiers of three lights, and the low octagonal crossing tower has a pyramidal roof with three small lights in each face.

The four-bay nave has pent aisles and paired lights in the aisles and clerestory. The south porch has double-boarded doors between red sandstone columns with Romanesque capitals and a carved arch inscribed with interlace decoration. A flat-roofed narthex at the north west has blind, arched panels and provides the present entrance to the church. Beneath the three-light west window there is a pent western narthex with bands of tile in the form of a Lombard frieze, flanked by full-height polygonal towers with narrow lights.

The interior has a ribbed barrel-vault roof with cross vaults to the clerestory windows. The crossing has a ribbed dome supported on squinches, linked by a brick arcade. The apse has a ribbed dome resting on a brick cornice, with ribs carried down to the floor as pilasters. The lower sanctuary walls have plain plaster panelling and two triple sedilia, with large panelled openings to either side.

A large Crucifix is suspended from the apse ceiling. Each transept has a large arched niche in the east wall containing a doorway into a sacristy; the undersides of the niches are decorated with incised cross motifs. Below the three-light west window there is a gallery supported on triple arches with the main west entrance below flanked by niches.