St Peter’s Church Gorse Hill Stretford (Architectural Competition)

This sketch of an interior designed recently in a limited competition for the above church was placed second by the committee, there being no assessor. We illustrated an exterior view of the first premiated design in Building News for 21 February 1908 by Mr Ernest Woodhouse FRIBA. Cost was limited to £4,500 and to seat 540, including the choir, this necessitated a very simple treatment. The plan is arranged with chancel the full width of the nave, and only two large piers in the latter, placed wide apart, and no clerestory. A chapel is placed to the north side of the chancel, a north-east porch, which was carried up as a small bell-tower being convenient for this. Vestries balance the chapel on the south side. The church is intended to be built of narrow local stock bricks with stone tracery in the eastern window only. The interior is to be plastered with wood barrel ceiling, the eastern bay over the altar table to be coloured. Messrs J Gibbon & Son are the architects of the scheme.