Ellison Road, St Phillip Neri RC Church

An unusual design, probably originally built in about 1905 as a timber-framed temporary church, which was re-clad with what appears to be cast artificial stone in the 1930s. The original interior largely survives.


Before 1882 services were held in a hired room in Tynedale Terrace and then a hay loft in Bolam Street (serving as a dual purpose school and church). In 1882 a new dual purpose church and school building was built from the designs of Dunn & Hansom. Lack of funds meant that the planned presbytery could not be built and the priest continued to live in Tynedale Terrace until a new presbytery was built in 1884.

The dual-purpose building served until 1905 when a temporary church was built. This was followed in 1909 by an extension to the school building and the opening of the infant school as a separate department.

The church is of traditional form, with a nave and short sanctuary under a continuous pitched roof, north and south aisles with pent roofs, a west porch and a small southeast tower. The external cladding appears to be of artificial stone blocks, possibly with some natural stone, laid in regular courses. The roof coverings are slate, recently renewed on the aisles. At the west of the church is a two storey continuation of the nave, which contains the organ gallery, and has a square battlemented porch on its west face. The slightly taller nave is of seven bays on the south side and six on the north side, with rectangular timber windows with leaded lights in the aisles and smaller windows of similar shape and type in the clerestory. The tower stands alongside the sanctuary.