Church Of St Stephen and All Martyrs, Lever Bridge, Bolton
A TERRA-COTTA CHURCH.—Near Bolton-le-Moors a beautiful church has recently been built, entirely of terra-cotta—burnt clay—inside, outside, tower, and basement, all of the same materials. A correspondent says - The church is situated about a mile from Bolton, near the Haugh (called the Huff). It is built of a kind of fine clay, found near the spot, between the beds of coal, in Mrs. Fletcher's mines; it is subjected to a great pressure, and then burnt. The colour is rather good—a kind of tawny. The situation, too, is very pretty. The architecture (by Sharp, of Lancaster) is very florid Gothic—too much so, perhaps, for the form of the arches, which cannot be of a much later date than Edward III; but I speak doubtingly. The interior is enormously decorated - the roof of dark stained oak; the floor is of tile, inlaid with numbers of crosses; the steps of the communion encaustic tile; and all other matters to match. The seats are open, not formed into pews. The building, which, I believe, is not yet dedicated, forms a lovely object in the landscape." -' Liverpool Mercury.' [Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal August 1844 page 331]
St. Stephen, Lever Bridge, begun in 1842, is the first work of the nineteenth century, in which terra cotta was used on a large scale. The chief promoter and largest subscriber to the church was Colonel John Fletcher who owned coal mines at Hollins in Bolton and at Ladyshore Colliery, Little Lever. With the coal were found deposits of fireclay which were first used to manufacture refractory bricks for coke ovens and furnaces (1). To demonstrate the wider possibilities of the material, John Fletcher decided to use terra cotta for the construction of this new church and, in 1841, he commissioned his future son in law Edmund Sharpe to prepare the designs. Sharpe was later to recall: It was, I believe, the first work of the kind in modern times in which terra-cotta had been used on such a large scale: for with the exception of the foundations and the rubble work between the outer and inner faces of the walls, neither stone nor bricks were used.
Terra cotta appeared to offer several advantages. It was strong, light, easily worked, relatively non- absorbent and, suitable clays being a by-product of coal mining in the Bolton area, it was available at moderate cost. However, its use on this proposed scale was to cause considerable technical difficulty. Sharpe referred to some of the problems encountered almost thirty years later in his Memoir: "The experiment was a bold, not to say a hazardous one, and its realisation was an extremely arduous affair. Kilns had to be built, and other necessary premises to be constructed; experienced workmen bad to be engaged, and above all, a competent and able modeller to be secured. It was, in fact, the creation of a new enterprise." The main technical difficulties to be resolved were the unpredictable amounts of warping and shrinkage that occurred in both the drying and burning stages of production and in the amount of firing required for each piece. These problems of warping and shrinkage were greatly increased if the blocks were completely solid. At Lever Bridge, the warping of the moulded lines in the door and window jambs, arches, sills, buttress offsets, pinnacles and base course, and the difficulty of thoroughly burning solid pieces of so great a size presented enormous technical difficulties. Much against his natural inclination, Sharpe was forced to have the blocks manufactured hollow and have them filled with concrete on site at Lever Bridge.
In preparing drawings for his first terra cotta churches, Sharpe provided details at the correct size, leaving the manufacturer to determine the necessary allowance for shrinkage. However, in the light of experience, Sharpe produced his later drawings at a scale of 13.25 inches to one foot to allow for shrinkage. Charles Barry Jr. used a similar method, adopting a scale of 13 inches to one foot (3). Later in the century, when the use of terra cotta became more widespread, manufacturers such as Doulton, Blashfield and Cliff reduced these problems to a matter of certainty and could guarantee the true execution of an architect's designs to the exact scale shown. However, in 1842, such difficulties could only be resolved through trial and error. Sharpe commented: " Take for example, the lower portion of one of the aisle buttresses, it was easy enough to know the probable shrinkage of the coursed blocks of its masonry, but who was to predict beforehand the amount to which the upper and lower members of its base mould would shrink? Experiments had therefore to be made which involved the preparation of moulds, and the forming, drying and burning of the pieces before any degree of certainty could be obtained; and much was the work of this experimental nature that had to be gone through and thrown aside, before the true scale to which this detail work had to be designed could be accurately determined." Despite these technical difficulties and the inevitable opposition of the reactionary element who ridiculed the whole scheme for 'the pot church.' Fletcher and his supporters had their way.
Work began in 1842 and the church was completed and opened in 1844 at a cost of £2,600. St. Stephen is small and cruciform, with seating for 350. The aisleless nave and extremely shallow chancel would have rendered the plan suspect ecclesiologically. However, the church has north and south transepts and originally there was a fine west tower and spire. The style chosen by Sharpe was a florid Curvilinear of the early fourteenth century, with crocketed pinnacles, deeply moulded door and window jambs, parapets of open tracery, traceried windows and all other detail characteristic of the period. The interior was simply organized with ornamentation used sparingly. Sharpe concentrated this in the shallow chancel, which has a trefoiled arcade round the three sides above which was a series of crocketed niches intended for memorial brasses in the north and south walls, all in terra cotta, the walls themselves being faced with blocks in five inch courses. Even the pews have traceried terra cotta panels to the backs and ends, the pulpit and organ case were similarly treated and so was the original font which has since been replaced by a simpler one in stone. Sharpe's initial enthusiasm also led him to design the communion table in terra cotta. However, objections were soon raised to it being uncanonical and it was replaced by a wooden table.
Once the crowning glory of the church, the spire was an elaborate open work octagonal structure in the German style. It was built completely of terra cotta panels fastened together with dowels of the same material. Sharpe rejected iron as less durable and copper as too costly, claiming that dowels of terra cotta were cheap to produce and were imperishable for all practical purposes. A timber model of the spire was exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851. However, in 1937 the spire and part of the tower were declared unsafe and taken down, and have never been rebuilt because of the costs involved.
It is perhaps not surprising that The Ecclesiologist found grave faults in the design. The most scathing criticisms were reserved for the material of which the church was constructed with doubts being raised as to its durability. Although expressing a grudging regard for Sharpe’s ingenuity, the writer then went on to comment ironically and at some length on the economical repetition of window and other details. However, the core of the argument was the inappropriate and “deceitful” use of terra-cotta to replicate natural stone.
Reference Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, August 1844 page 331
Reference Manchester Guardian 4 December 1844 page 7
Reference Robert Jolley: 'Edmund Sharpe and the Pot Churches'. Architectural Review December 1969 Pg. 428.
Reference The Ecclesiologist Volume 3 February 1844 Pages 86-7
