St. Chad's Catholic Church



St. Chad's Catholic Church on Cheetham Hill Road was designed by the architectural practice of Weightman and Hadfield.  The partners designed a number of Roman Catholic churches including Salford Cathedral.  St Chad's was built between 1846 and 1847.  Pevsner reports that it has a six bay nave with octagonal piers and hammerbeam roof.  The tower has a higher stair turret.



Attached to the church is a large Presbytery with steep gables and gabled dormers, as you can see above.



St Chad's is associated with Sister Elizabeth Prout.  As a young woman Elizabeth attended a talk given by Dominic Barberi, a missionary for the Catholic Order the "Passionists".  She was so inspired that she converted to Catholicism and then, on the advice of another Passionist, Father Gaudentius Rossi, she joined a Sisterhood in Northampton.  When Rossi was given a parish mission at St. Chad's he persuaded Sister Elizabeth to move there to teach in the parish church.  In the years that followed she worked among the poor of the community and founded a group that was known as the "Institute of the Holy Family" and she became known as Mother Mary Joseph of Jesus.  In 1864 at the age of 43 she died of tuberculosis at the Sutton Convent in Lancashire.  In more recent times she was put forward for canonisation, a claim based on evidence of miraculous cures of people with cancer and severe brain damage.


Close Window