Church of St Anne, Market Place, Bishop Auckland 2000


Church of St Anne, Market Place 2006


Church of St Anne, Market Place 2006


Oblique view of St. Anne's Church, Market Place, Bishop Auckland July 2016

Chapel of ease, with railings and gate attached. Incorporating community centre since 1985. On site of medieval chapel. 1846-8. Designed by William Thompson. Built by William Edgar. Alterations 1867, and internal alterations 1893. MATERIALS: coursed squared sandstone with ashlar plinth, quoins and dressings. Graduated Lakeland slate roof with stone gable copings. PLAN: chancel with north organ chamber and south vestry, aisled 4-bay nave with south porch, and west belfry. EXTERIOR: Early English style. East elevation has 3 lancets to chancel, boarded doors in pointed arched surround to aisle and straight headed vestry door. South elevation has 3-light vestry window under low gable with stone cross finial. Other lights lancets, paired in aisles and very long in west, with dripmoulds with head stops. Gabled porch in 3rd nave bay has deeply moulded surround to double boarded doors. West elevation has stepped buttresses to clerestory height, boarded central door in moulded surround, corbelled octagonal belfry rising between lancets to arcaded lancet louvres and stone spirelet. Steeply gabled roofs, lower over chancel and pent on aisles, have stone gable copings with stone cross finials. Railings attached to east end enclose door to chancel aisle and have spike heads and iron gate loop. INTERIOR plastered with ashlar arcades and dressings. Chancel and porch waggon roofs, nave arch braced trusses with high collar with trefoil in western apex. Dripstrings to double chamfered pointed arches of nave arcades with moulded capitals on octagonal piers. South arcade blocked and community centre formed by glazed screen with filleted mullions and transoms. Pointed chancel arch on shafts. Wider organ arches to chancel and north aisle, the latter filled with Gothic wood screen. FITTINGS include chancel panelling and reredos with blind tracery and high cresting, the reredos also having painted panels. Perpendicular tracery to organ arch. Octagonal pulpit with brass handrails, octagonal font of painted stone dated 1892, gift of the children of the Barrington School, with C17 style carved wood cover dated 1893 gift of the teachers. Choir pews have poppyheads and pierced flowing tracery, nave pews have shaped ends with nailhead decoration. Glass with heraldic devices, including arms of Bishop Cosin in west windows, set in clear lights.

MEMORIALS: East window memorial to John Proud and his wife Ellen d.1905 & 1882, figures set in grisaille and signed Percy Bacon Bros 11 Newman Street London. Plaque dedicated to the fallen of WW1 and WW2; book of remembrance dedicated to all of those of Bishop Auckland lost in wars (NEWMP B140.12) (1-2).

The church paid for by public subscription, including 1,000 guineas from Bishop Maltby. (St Anne's Bishop Auckland; A Brief Historical Sketch: Bishop Auckland; Directory of County Durham: 1894: 328).

HISTORY: The original St. Anne's Chapel was built in the episcopate of Hugh de Puiset (1153-1195) and took its present form in 1848. The building was also used as the local Grammar School, the Magistrates Court and the Justice Rooms. The town goal was once under the church (4).