File:St Marys Church, St Marys Row, Moseley.jpg

Original file(3,648 × 2,736 pixels, file size: 2.25 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Captions

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Summary

edit
Description

This is the main church in Moseley Village, supposedly is more than 600 years old, but the current building dates to the 18th century.

It is a Grade II listed building.

A church of C15 origin, built as a chapel in the parish of Kings Norton but a subsequent history of numerous rebuilds and enlargements. The plain stone west tower is an early C16 addition but with much brick refacing. The body of the church was rebuilt in 1780 and considerably altered by Thomas Rickman 1823-24. Finally, under Chatwins father and son, a complete reconstruction, excluding the tower, was initiated. J A Chatwin added the north aisle 1886, enlarged to chancel and provided a side chapel in 1897. The nave and south aisle were rebuilt in 1910 by P B Chatwin who also carved out reconstruction following war domain in 1952-54. Ashlar elevations in a competent simply modelled Decorated style typical of the Chatwin practice. Crennellation to tower parapet.

[A church of C15 origin, built as a chapel in theparish of Kings Norton but a subsequent history of numerous rebuilds and enlargements. The plain stone west tower is an early C16 addition but with much brick refacing. The body of the church was rebuilt in 1780 and considerably altered by Thomas Rickman 1823-24. Finally, under Chatwins father and son, a complete reconstruction, excluding the tower, was initiated. J A Chatwin added the north aisle 1886, enlarged to chancel and provided a side chapel in 1897. The nave and south aisle were rebuilt in 1910 by P B Chatwin who also carved out reconstruction following war domain in 1952-54. Ashlar elevations in a competent simply modelled Decorated style typical of the Chatwin practice. Crennellation to tower parapet. Church of St Mary, Moseley - Heritage Gateway]

Below is info from Bill Dargue - places - Moseley

Moseley's parish church was founded rather later than Birmingham's other ancient churches. St Mary's is first mentioned in 1405 in a declaration of the church as a chapel-of-ease of Kings Norton church licensed by the Bishop of Worcester on the authority of Pope Innocent VII. It is likely to have been set up by wealthy local residents to save themselves the long journey to Kings Norton every Sunday morning. At that time the route ran via Dogpool Lane across the wide marshy valley of the River Rea, which was prone to flooding in winter. The oldest surviving part of the building is the tower which was built in 1514 using forty-eight wagon-loads of stone reused from Bromsgrove's old parsonage.


By 1780 the chapel had fallen into such disrepair that services could no longer be held here. The fallen roof was repaired and the church was encased in brick with fashionable round-headed windows in neo-classical style. But only forty years later, fashions had changed and the leading gothicist, Thomas Rickman was employed to remove the alterations and regothicise the church. He plastered the external brick-clad walls to look like stone, added cast-iron girders simulated as timber and put gothic-style iron frames in the windows.

Another forty years on and all of Rickman's work was lost in further gothic restoration. In 1876 the Birmingham architect, J A Chatwin restored, rebuilt and extended the building. Ten years later a north aisle was added, and in 1897 the chancel and transept were built, bringing the church to its present size. The nave and south aisle were reconstructed in 1910 by Chatwin's son, P B Chatwin who later also repaired the German bomb damage which occurred in 1940 during the Second World War.

St Mary's has a unique ring of bells which attracts visiting ringers from all over the country. The peal originated in Sheffield. In a pioneering venture in 1861, eight steel bells cast by a Sheffield foundry were loaned to St Marie's Roman Catholic Church. This was an unusual experiment as English bells have been made from time immemorial with a copper-tin alloy known as bell metal. In comparison with bell metal, steel bells are very heavy for the note they produce. The steel bells were bought for St Mary's in 1874 by Sir John Holder of Pitmaston, Moor Green.


However, when the church was partially rebuilt in 1910, the ringing room floor was removed and the bells could no longer be rung full circle, only chimed with hammers. Examination in 1979 found the bell installation to be unsafe and it was recommended that it should be removed. However, a suggestion was made to the Parochial Church Council that the bells could and should be restored, these being now the only surviving steel bells in the country. After a great deal of fund-raising and 5000 hours of volunteer labour, the restoration was completed by Easter 1991, when the bells were rung after morning service for the first time in over 80 years.
Date
Source

St Mary's Church, St Mary's Row, Moseley

Author Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom
Camera location52° 26′ 46.2″ N, 1° 53′ 09.75″ W Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

Licensing

edit
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
This image, originally posted to Flickr, was reviewed on December 31, 2009 by the administrator or reviewer File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske), who confirmed that it was available on Flickr under the stated license on that date.

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current23:50, 31 December 2009Thumbnail for version as of 23:50, 31 December 20093,648 × 2,736 (2.25 MB)File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) (talk | contribs){{Information |Description=This is the main church in Moseley Village, supposedly is more than 600 years old, but the current building dates to the 18th century. It is a Grade II listed building. A church of C15 origin, built as a chapel in the parish

There are no pages that use this file.

Metadata