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The Pot Church
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Bold ventures often led to
hazardous and expensive experiments and this was certainly true
for John Fletcher Esq., the owner of a colliery near Bolton,
when he commissioned Edmund Sharpe in 1841 to design a new church
at Lever Bridge, using the clay waste from his coal mine for
the terra-cotta building blocks. St. Stephen and All Martyrs,
Lever Bridge was the first of three such churches, the second
one was Holy Trinity, Platt Fields, Rusholme, consecrated in
1846 and the church at Scotforth near Lancaster, designed in
1874 which is now outside the diocesan boundary.
Mr. Sharpe wrote a paper "On
the adaptability of Terra Cotta to Modern Church Work: It's Use
and Abuse" ( The Builder 10th June 1876 ) in which he outlines
the whole project. He credits Mr. Fletcher as the chief promoter,
the largest subscriber and the man who conceived the idea of
building the entire church, except for the foundations, rubble-wall
filling and roof covering with terra-cotta. This material had
been used by the ancient Egyptians but Lever Bridge was "the
first work of the kind in modern times in which terra-cotta had
been used on so large a scale". Even the Communion table
was originally a terra-cotta structure, but it was objected to
as uncanonical and had ultimately to be removed and replaced. |
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The bench-ends, the organ case
and even the roof beams were all made of the stuff. Mr. Sharpe
said, of his critics "the upholders of stone and plaster,
in derision, denominated this small church which from one end
to the other, inside and outside, shows nothing but terra-cotta
- The Pot Church they had, apparently, some reason to do so'
There were many problems in this new enterprise. New kilns had
to be built to "fire" the clay and the time allowed
for burning the various blocks gauged by the wasteful "trial
and error" method. Some blocks warped, others shrank and
many of the larger ones were not fired sufficiently and, only
after they had been built into the work, was it found their durability
was suspect and a considerable number had to be replaced. The
church took nearly three years to build. Much more damage was
done later by the lavish overgrowth of ivy. The church, however,
only cost £2,600 and provided sittings for 350 people "What
it would cost in stone I never took the trouble to calculate",
wrote Mr. Sharpe, "but the spire alone would, I should think,
cost as much as the whole church has". This spire is no
longer. It became unsafe and had to be demolished after standing
for just over a century. |
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The text has been taken from
the book` Like A Mighty Tortoise' by The Rev'd Arthur J Dobb
& Derek Ralphs. |
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