Church of St Charles, Tudhoe 2006


Church of St Charles, Tudhoe 2006

Roman Catholic parish church and presbytery attached. 1870 by J.A. Hansom & Son. 1882 addition of tower and ritual west bay with west porch. Aligned north-south. Rock-faced sandstone with plinth and ashlar dressings; Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings. Decorated style with Perpendicular-style additions. Nave with north porch, north-west Lady chapel and belltower, west porch; apsidal sanctuary. Steeply-gabled north porch contains double boarded doors in 2-centred-arched surround with dripmould. West porch has double doors in deeply-moulded 2-centred-arch, with pinnacled dripmould, flanked by paired small windows and outer gabled buttresses, all under steeply-pitched pent roof flanked by high coped buttresses. Large rose window above with free tracery. Tracery also in tall 2-light nave windows; high stepped buttresses define bays; 2 similar windows in half-octagonal sanctuary under corbel table, each side buttressed. Small ogee-headed lights in Lady chapel with pent roof and in 3-stage tower. First square stage of tower broached to octagonal second stage, which has coped set-back to octagonal belfry, with Perpendicular tracery in 8 lights under high stone spire. Roofs steeply-pitched, that over sanctuary lower and half-octagonal; stone cross finials. Presbytery attached to ritual north-east is in plainer style; 2 storeys, 3 bays on return to church. Plain sash windows, with chamfered stop-chamfered jambs and flat stone lintels, and wide chimney-stack with offset rising from eaves in third bay. Gable over first-floor window in first bay. Double-span roof with chimneys at ends of side furthest from church.

Interior of church: painted plaster with ashlar dressings and boarded dado; arch-braced panelled roof on corbelled shafts with leaf-carved capitals; similar roof to apsidal sanctuary. Chancel arch double-chamfered, the inner on triple shafts with leaf-patterned corbels. Similar treatment to large west arch with wider chamfer and head-stopped dripmould. 4 round piers support west choir gallery with Gothic-panelled balcony; similar Gothic treatment to interior of west porch. Elaborate Gothic altar, with painted panels, brought 1880 from Munich. Well-carved Gothic-style wood pulpit 1907 commemorating 60 years of priesthood of Rev. Provost Watson, who was responsible for the building. Glass, supplied by H.M. Barnett, Victoria Works, Westmoreland Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1870, damaged in World War Two by bomb and restored, includes east windows showing Holy Family; west window, probably 1882, has figures from the Apocalypse. Square font with 4 Frosterley 'marble' shafts in Lady Chapel now used as base of altar; water-leaf decoration to bowl. Known to contain a WW2 memorial chalice dedicated to Tudhoe's dead (1).