History
of St. Cross
The
history of St. Cross is the history of the local people who built it, worshipped
in it, and shared their social lives around it.
Old photographs tell our history
in pictures.
The
church is not named after a person, 'Saint Cross', but after the Holy Cross
on which Jesus was put to death in about 30 AD. However, it seems always
to have been known as St. Cross. Our patronal festival is on 14th September,
the Feast Day of the Holy Cross.
The fine
red brick Victorian church was built between 1880 and 1881 on the site of an
earlier Victorian church which had become unsafe and had to be demolished.
(click
the images for enlarged view)
St
Cross and Cross Town
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The
district near the church is known as Cross Town. There seem two
possible reasons why this name came about. Historical accounts describe
a wayside stone cross on the Mobberley road, probably near the ancient
chapel of St. Helena, in what is now St John's Wood, Longridge. This
chapel was build in the middle ages by the Legh family of nearby Booths
Hall as a 'Chapel in the Fields' -- a local, handy place of worship for
his tenant farmers and estate workers, because the parish church was then
St. Mary's at Rostherne, 4 miles away. St. Helena of Constantinople
was the mother of Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.
She had travelled in the Holy Land and believed she had found the True
Cross (full story). St Helena is always
depicted next to the Cross. So both St. Helena and/or the actual
stone cross may be how Cross Town got its name.
In
the 18th century Knutsford grew, but there developed an 'us and them'
attitude between the wealthier people of Knutsford centre and the less
well off farmers, craftsmen and tradespeople of Cross Town. Things
got worse after the church of St. John the Baptist was built in the 1740s.
The registers of births, marriages and deaths plus the contents
of the family burial vault at St Helena's were moved to St. John's, which
was made the 'official' church. St. Helena's was no longer used,
and allowed to fall into disrepair. The people of Cross Town were
indignant, feeling that they were being treated as second class, and many
refused to attend St. John's.
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When Tatton
Park was developed by Lord Egerton about 1800, three hamlets were cleared and
the people rehoused in Knutsford, probably some in Cross Town. The steadily
growing population and grumbling ill feeling between CrossTowners and the gentry
of central Knutsford eventually prompted the squire of Booth's Hall, Peter Legh
(born 1794, died unmarried August 1857), to press for a church and indeed a
parish of their own in Cross Town.
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With
some funding and political pressure from Peter Legh, a
first church was built to Legh's own design, using materials from his
Norbury Booths estate. His tenants helped hands-on in the building,
and they would have made up much of the congregation. The church
must have been a symbol of unity and identity to the CrossTowners.
It was dedicated in February 1858, just after Peter Legh had died. The
independent parish of St. Cross was founded in 1860. Legh was a
Tractarian, a supporter of the 'high church' Oxford Movement for reform
of the Church of England. Today at St Cross we continue with Sung
Eucharist almost every Sunday.
A
map of 1875 shows the original 'St. Cross's church', the vicarage and
graveyard, church's Cross Town Day School for boys and girls opposite
the graveyard, on the other side of Mobberley Road. At that time
there were only a few houses nearby, along Mobberley Road opposite the
church. The vicarage was a converted farm house, standing where
the present vicarage drive and parking area are. The first Vicar,
Rev. Lawrence Riley, was also the master of the grammar school, and he
lodged some pupils in the vicarage, using an outbuilding as schoolroom.
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Despite
the good efforts of the amateur church builders, building faults soon appeared
in this first church. Either the foundations were unsound, or the walls
too flimsy to bear the weight of the roof. The second Vicar, Ralph Bradbury,
was alarmed by 'ominous fissures in the walls' from floor to roof. The
building was patched up but remained unsafe, so it had to be demolished and
rebuilt 20 years later.
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The
new church, which we use today, was designed by professional architects,
Paley and Austin, previously Sharpe and Paley, of Lancaster. The
senior architect, Edmund Sharpe, had retired in 1851 but is likely to
have had an interest in the church's design because he had grown up on
Brook Street, Knutsford, and been a childhood playmate of Elizabeth Stevenson,
the future Mrs Gaskell.
Lord
Egerton of Tatton laid the foundation stone in July 1880 and the church
was consecrated on Holy Cross Day, 14 September 1881. The tower
was added in 1887 as part of the celebrations for Queen Victoria's Golden
Jubilee. A spire had been planned originally, but never erected.
In 1896 there were plans for a full peal of bells, but this too
never materialised. It seems that all funds were needed to extend
the church school opposite, so we have just the one bell. (Today
this is rung before all services, to call people.) In all the new
church took 10 years to complete and cost £7,580.
Cross
Town continued its independent spirit. It had its own Silver Band, and
its own May Queen and May Day parade.
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Inside
the church building
The
new church is built in the perpendicular style, in red brick with terracotta
features. It has north and south aisles in the nave, a tower at the crossing,
and a chancel with north and south chapels. A two-storey vestry is on
the southeast corner, opposite the entrance porch in the north west corner.
There is a small sacristy at the west end of the north aisle, where the
ministers and servers robe for services.
The National
Victorian Society commented on how beautifully the building combines limestone
and red brick, both inside and out. The church is graded II* meaning it
is a particularly important building of more than special interest.
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If
you enter at the north west porch, you will see a crude block of stone,
deeply hollowed out. It had been used as a font in the first church,
but a plaque attached explains "This stone, the socket of a cross
of very remote antiquity, was found under the surface of the old churchyard,
AD 1846". The 'old churchyard' was St Helena's. So this
lump of stone dates from the very beginining of Cross Town and St. Cross.
In
the south aisle is St George's memorial chapel, with plaques listing service
men and women killed in the two world wars. Mounted on the wall
is an old standard of the Knutsford branch of the Royal British Legion,
laid up here in 2010. You are welcome to light a candle here in
remembrance of a loved one, or to offer a prayer.
Also
in the south aisle is the Children's Corner, popular with our young families
since it was established in the 1980's. A door leads through to
our modern Parish Room, opened 1980, with kitchen and toilet facilities.
The
chancel screen was given in 1900. It was not part of the original design.
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The
chapel on the north side is the Lady Chapel, used for Morning Prayer during
the week and on various other occasions including Maundy Thursday Vigil,
Advent and Lent Meditations and the Night Office of Compline. The
Reserved Sacrament is kept here - this is consecrated bread and wine which
may be taken out to any who are sick or housebound, and is also regularly
taken to nursing homes in the area.
The
church boasts two Pre-Raphaelite stained glass windows designed by Edward
Burne-Jones and made by Morris & Co., foremost in the Arts and Crafts
Movement. The west window, dated 1893, depicts the Adoration of
the Magi flanked by prophets and apostles. The other Burne-Jones
window is the easternmost one in the south aisle. It shows the Good
Samaritan, Christ as Love in the centre and to the right Dorcas. It
is dedicated to Annie, wife on Charles John Galloway of Thorneyholme who
died in 1899. Galloway owned a successful boiler engineering business
in Manchester, and built Thorneyholme as his semi-rural mansion. He
was a churchwarden of St. Cross. The railway allowed several such
wealthy business people to live in Knutsford.
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The
organ has three manuals, 30 stops (Great 6, Swell 9, Choir 6, Pedals 9).
The organ from the first church was transferred to the new, but
in 1894 it was sold to Mobberley Church for £100, and a new organ specially
built by W. Hill and Sons of London, cost £535. No lesser personage
than Sir Frederick Bridge, Organist at Westminster Abbey, played at the
inaugural ceremony. In 1963 the organ was rebuilt by Willis and
Sons of Liverpool at a cost of £5210, and rededicated by the Bishop of
Stockport.
The
church continues to be involved strongly in the community. The Vicar is
a governor of the local primary school and co-operates with other churches
in many local activities and initiatives. The Festival of Christmas Trees
in 2010 was a good example of how many local people, businesses and organisations
can still pull together to produce a magical, uplifting celebration.
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Around
the church
The first
vicarage was originally a farmhouse, much extended. During World War II paratroopers
were billeted there with the Vicar. It was in poor condition for decades, riddled
with woodworm and dry rot. A new vicarage was built in the rear garden, starting
in 1956. When it was complete, in 1958, the old vicarage was demolished. A deep
well in the grounds was capped in 1975.
The original
vicarage had a two-storey outbuilding along the side of what is now Branden
Drive. These were used as a schoolroom and later as parish rooms. The ground
floor was a single room with a stage. It could seat over 80 people and Knutsford
residents remember church socials, concerts and pantomines there, plus Brownies
and Guides.
Houses now
stand where the little church school used to be. It opened in 1861as Cross Town
Day School and had pupils until about 1970 when Norbury Booths School opened.
The church supported it financially until 1952, when it was adopted by the Local
Authority. The pupils were nicknamed 'Cross Town Bull Dogs' and wore black uniforms
with yellow piping. After the school closed, the building was used by the church
as a function room until its new church hall was ready in 1980. The old school
was then demolished in 1981.
The graveyard
is closed in that there are no unused plots, so is maintained by the Local Authority.
However, we do have a small Garden of Remembrance where you will often see flowers
and wreaths.
Origins
of Holy Cross Festival
Here is
the historical background to the Holy Cross festival -- "Raising Aloft
of the Holy Cross" -- every 14th September. The True Cross is said
to have been discovered in 326 by the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine
I, Helena of Constantinople, during a pilgrimage she made to Jerusalem. The
Church of the Holy Sepulchre was then built at the site of the discovery, by
order of Helena and Constantine. The church was dedicated in 335 with
a portion of the cross placed inside it. The Dedication festival lasted
two days and although the actual consecration of the church was on September
13, the cross itself was brought outside the church on September 14 so that
the clergy and faithful could pray before the True Cross, and all could come
forward to venerate it.
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These
notes are based on several sources, including church records, 19th century
maps, the book 'Knutsford, a History' by the late Joan Leach (pub. Phillimore
2007), the 1939 booklet 'Memories
of St Cross' by a retired vicar, Rev W Armour, and a history by John
Kelleway prepared for the 1989 centenary celebrations, plus interviews
with older inhabitants and the present Vicar.
Image
of St. Helena is from the internet at acelebrationofwomen.org
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All
the Vicars of the parish are listed here. |
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