St Mary's Church, Wavertree

St Mary's Church, Wavertree
St Mary's Church, Wavertree
	St Mary's Church, Wavertree, from the southeast
	St Mary's Church, Wavertree Location in Merseyside
	Coordinates: 53°24′03″N2°55′12″W / 53.4007°N 2.9199°W
OS grid reference	SJ 389 897
Location	North Drive, Wavertree, Liverpool, Merseyside
Country	England
Denomination	Anglican
Website	St Mary, Wavertree
History
Status	Parish church
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II
Designated	14 March 1975
Architectural type	Church
Groundbreaking	1872
Completed	1880s
Specifications
Materials	Sandstone, slate roofs
Administration
Parish	St Mary, Wavertree
Deanery	Toxteth and Wavertree
Archdeaconry	Liverpool
Diocese	Liverpool
Province	York
Clergy
Rector	Revd June Asquith
Laity
Churchwarden(s)	Bill Farrell, Rita Taylor

Last updated June 12, 2019

St Mary's Church is in North Drive, Wavertree, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Toxteth and Wavertree, the archdeaconry of Liverpool, and the diocese of Liverpool.^[1] The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.^[2]

Wavertree is an area of Liverpool, in Merseyside, England, and is a Liverpool City Council ward. The population of the ward taken at the 2011 census was 14,772. Historically in Lancashire, it is bordered by a number of districts to the south and east of Liverpool city centre from Toxteth, Edge Hill, Fairfield, Old Swan, Childwall and Mossley Hill.

Liverpool City and Metropolitan borough in England

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in North West England, with an estimated population of 491,500. Its metropolitan area is the fifth-largest in the UK, with a population of 2.24 million in 2011. The local authority is Liverpool City Council, the most populous local government district in the metropolitan county of Merseyside and the largest in the Liverpool City Region.

Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool. Merseyside, which was created on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, takes its name from the River Mersey.

History

The building originated as a Methodist church, which was built in 1872–73. In the 1880s additions were made to it, including a tower with a broach spire.^[3] The church was damaged during the First World War, and was renovated in 1925. It failed to flourish, and closed as a Methodist church in 1950.^[4]

A broach spire is a type of tall pyramidal or conical structure (spire) which usually sits atop a tower or turret of a church. It starts on a square base and is carried up to a tapering octagonal spire by means of triangular faces.

St Mary's Anglican church was designed by W. and J. Hay and built in Sandown Park.^[3] The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1850, and the church was consecrated in 1856,^[4] but it was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.^[3] When the Methodists closed the church, it was sold to the Church of England, and converted for use as an Anglican church. This was consecrated in December 1952.^[4]

The Church of England is the established church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor. The Church of England is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain by the third century, and to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury.

Architecture

The church is constructed in yellow sandstone with red sandstone dressings.^[3] It has a slate roof. The plan consists of a five-bay nave without aisles, shallow transeptal projections, a canted apse at the east end, a west baptistry, and a northeast steeple.^[2]^[3] The tower has angle buttresses, and an entrance under a pointed arch, above which are two lancet windows. Over this are two-light windows with rose windows, and above them are a Lombard frieze, gargoyles, and a pierced parapet.^[2] The windows along the sides of the nave have two lights and contain Decorated tracery.^[2]^[3] At the east end of the church is a blocked entrance, with a five-light window above it. Incorporated in the blocked entrance is the foundation stone of the original Anglican church.^[2]

Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized mineral particles or rock fragments.

Slate A fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, weakly metamorphic rock

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. Foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering, but instead is in planes perpendicular to the direction of metamorphic compression.

In architecture, a bay is the space between architectural elements, or a recess or compartment. Bay comes from Old French baee, meaning an opening or hole.

Associated features

In the churchyard is a war memorial that was moved from the churchyard of the previous church. The memorial is also recorded as a designated Grade II listed building. It is in stone, and has a triangular plinth. On the plinth is a triangular pedestal with scrolled feet on the corners at the base, and a cornice with carved scrolls at the top. Standing on the pedestal is a hexagonal tapering column with a simple hexagonal column at the top. On the east side of the base is a stone plaque commemorating those who died in the Second World War, on each side of the plinth is an inscribed stone plaque, and on the sides of the pedestal are plaques with the names of those who died in the First World War. The memorial stands in a hexagonal area bounded by a kerb and filled with gravel.^[5]

A pedestal or plinth is the support of a statue or a vase.

Cornice horizontal decorative molding that crowns a building or furniture

In architecture, a cornice is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns a building or furniture element – the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the top edge of a pedestal or along the top of an interior wall. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown.

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References

↑ St Mary, Wavertree, Church of England , retrieved 3 September 2013
1 2 3 4 5 Historic England, "Church of St Mary (1070581)", National Heritage List for England , retrieved 3 September 2013
1 2 3 4 5 6 Pollard, Richard; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2006), Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 493, ISBN 0-300-10910-5
1 2 3 The Church of St Mary, Wavertree, Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerks, retrieved 3 September 2013
↑ Historic England, "War memorial at St Mary's Church, Wavertree (1434484)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 22 April 2016

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[1] St Mary, Wavertree, Church of England , retrieved 3 September 2013

[nhl-2] 1 2 3 4 5 Historic England, "Church of St Mary (1070581)", National Heritage List for England , retrieved 3 September 2013

[pev-3] 1 2 3 4 5 6 Pollard, Richard; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2006), Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 493, ISBN 0-300-10910-5

[lopc-4] 1 2 3 The Church of St Mary, Wavertree, Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerks, retrieved 3 September 2013

[5] Historic England, "War memorial at St Mary's Church, Wavertree (1434484)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 22 April 2016