St. Winefride - Shrewsbury

Introduction

The church was built in 1956 to designs by Francis Xavier Velarde. The church is built of brown brick with cast stone decoration and concrete tile roofs.

History

St Winefride's was built in 1956 to serve a new parish in Monkmoor, a suburb of Shrewsbury, with a congregation of around 400. The church was designed by Francis Xavier Velarde (c1898-1960), a pupil of Professor Charles Reilly and a major Liverpool-based Catholic architect.

Architecture and furnishings

The church has an aisleless nave and apsidal sanctuary under a single roof, with a lower narthex with south doorway, and a linked south-east square campanile with former baptistery in base. The south elevation is of five bays defined by large buttresses, with a lower, set-back narthex at the west end, the linked campanile and semi-circular sanctuary apse at the east end. The nave bays have small, paired round-headed windows with cast-stone mullions with relief images alternately of an angel and a dove. The square campanile rises to a stone-faced bellcote with a large, round-headed opening in each face, and a pyramidal copper roof surmounted by a bronze cross.

The interior walls are of unadorned brown brick, with nave bays defined by full-width, round arches springing low to the ground straight from the nave walls. The focus of the interior is a fine gold-painted crucifix designed by Velarde, hung high on the sanctuary wall lit by side windows concealed from the congregation by the chancel arch. In the sanctuary is a white stone altar with an incised gold design of XP (Chi-Rho) and crosses, possibly to a design by Velarde. A small, circular stone font with a conical timber lid stands at the east end of the nave, having been moved from the original baptistery in the base of the campanile.

The Stations of the Cross are rectangular relief panels glazed grey-green with gold haloes, attached to the nave walls beneath small gilt crosses. The church retains the original linoleum and terrazzo flooring, which Velarde designed. The church is built of brown brick in stretcher bond and English garden wall bond (5:1) without a plinth or cornice. The windows have metal frames with a geometric pattern of textured clear glass and semi-circles of blue glass.

The wide doorway has double doors with applied timber beading forming a checked pattern and circular brass door handles. Over the doorway is a slightly recessed cusped-head stone tympanum inscribed with a fleur de lys motif. The sanctuary to the east of the link block has a large rectangular window with a cast-stone window frame three panes wide by four panes deep, with alternating rectangular and round-headed panes with textured clear glass. The flat centre and angled sides of the nave roof retain the original geometric decoration of blue and gold diamonds.

The flat narthex roof has a pattern of blue squares with blue diamonds and gilt crosses. The narthex, nave, sacristy, and link block have square linoleum tiles, with coloured geometric designs to the nave aisle, with carpet covering some of the linoleum. The sanctuary has terrazzo flooring. The nave and narthex windows have cast angel and dove mullions similar to those to the exterior. The community of Sisters Adorers in Preston was to visit on Sunday, September 14th, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and sing the Mass.

Parish life

The community of the Institute's Sisters Adorers in Preston visited the apostolate and instructed young girls in Gregorian Chant and Polyphony, catechism and artistic crafts.