Who Built Wigan's Churches

Category: News

1893 Railway Accident – Tragedy for St. Mary’s Church in Standishgate

Pat Sharp 28 July 2026 No Comments

The stained glass windows in St. Mary’s are of great interest to us. The maker’s mark on one of them tells us they were made by W. Gardner of St. [...]

St. Barnabas, Marsh Green

Pat Sharp 24 July 2026 No Comments

The church we see today was built in the early 1960s to serve the new housing estates in the Marsh Green area. Built without finance from a local donor, the [...]

Rogation Sunday

Pat Sharp 5 May 2026 No Comments

Rogation Sunday is celebrated on the fifth Sunday after Easter. Traditionally it is marked by a procession around the parish when the vicar says prayers over the newly planted crops [...]

Modern Roman Catholic Churches

Pat Sharp 11 March 2026 No Comments

We recently visited two Roman Catholic churches in Wigan, St. Cuthbert’s in Pemberton and St. Jude’s in Worsley Mesnes (above). The two churches are completely different in design and atmosphere. [...]

Christmas 1901

Pat Sharp 17 December 2025 No Comments

This year we take you back, thanks to the Wigan Observer, to Christmas 1901. Queen Victoria had died earlier in the year and the Boer War was finally drawing to [...]

Remembering Kitt Green soldiers

Pat Sharp 4 November 2025 No Comments

In most Wigan churches there are beautiful and dignified War Memorials erected in the early 1920s to commemorate the dead of the First World War. The names of those who [...]

Wigan’s Churches in 1905 – the Bishop’s view

Pat Sharp 30 September 2025 No Comments

During our research a name that crops up regularly is Rt. Revd. Francis James Chavasse. He was the second Bishop of Liverpool from 1900 to 1923 and the Liverpool Cathedral [...]

Edward Graham Paley (1823-95)

Pat Sharp 17 July 2025 No Comments

Edward Graham Paley (1823-95) designed six churches in Wigan, three of them himself, the others with partners in his practice. In this post we’ll focus on the three churches built [...]

Bertha Elizabeth Johnson (1862-1936)

Pat Sharp 3 July 2025 No Comments

When we visited St. James and St. Elizabeth’s church in Bickershaw we learnt about the family of James and Elizabeth Johnson. Their children paid for the church in the growing [...]

The Crawford family and Wigan’s churches

Pat Sharp 13 June 2025 No Comments

With their aristocratic status, wealth, land and business interests, it comes as no surprise that the Crawford family, the Earls of Balcarres (from 1848 the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres), [...]

Contact

hello@whobuiltwiganschurches.co.uk

Who Built
Wigan's
Churches?