St Walburge, Preston
St Walburge, Preston
St Walburge’s on Weston Street, Preston, is a Grade I Roman Catholic church by Joseph Aloysius Hansom, famous for the tallest parish-church spire in England, in the Diocese of Lancaster.
- Location
- Preston, Lancashire
- Country
- England
- County
- Lancashire
- City / town
- Preston
- Address
- Weston Street, Preston, Lancashire, PR2 2QE
- Postcode
- PR2 2QE
- Built
- 1850–54; tower c.1857; spire 1867; apse 1872
- Consecrated
- 3 August 1854 (opening)
- Architect
- Joseph Aloysius Hansom; Nichols of London (apse 1872)
- Denomination
- Catholic Church
- Dedication
- Walburge
- Diocese
- Lancaster
- Parish
- St Walburge and the Sacred Heart
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Gothic Revival (French C13 nave; East Midlands C15 steeple)
- Materials
- Coursed brown sandstone rubble, sandstone dressings, slate roof; white limestone steeple
- Grid reference
- SD 529 298
- Opening hours
- We open from 7.30am to 7.30pm every day of the year. Sunday from 9am to 7pm at the moment.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church. Level access throughout. Level access to the main areas
Overview
The Jesuits commissioned Hansom in 1847 for the Maudlands district, near the site of a twelfth-century leper hospital of St Mary Magdalene. The foundation stone was laid in May 1850; the church opened on 3 August 1854. Historic England records the tower completed about 1857 and the spire added in 1867, all by J. A. Hansom, with a short three-sided apse of 1872 by Nichols of London. The nave is a single-cell French thirteenth-century Gothic vessel of brown sandstone with a steep slate roof and a 22-foot rose window; the white limestone steeple, built of former railway sleepers, rises 309 feet (94 m) — the third-tallest spire in the United Kingdom after Salisbury and Norwich cathedrals, and the tallest on a parish church. The hammerbeam roof carries life-sized saints. Listed Grade I on 12 June 1950 (NHLE 1207341). Since 2014 the church has been a shrine of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, with Mass in the Extraordinary Form.