Christ Church, Sunderland

Sunderland

Last Updated:

24 Nov 2025

Sunderland

This is a

Church, Place of Worship

54.897542, -1.381432

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1209657

Founded in

1862

Current status is

Extant

Designer (if known):

James Murray

Now in use by the Sikh Community

I'd be here all day if we documented every single church in Sunderland, but we'll give it a go. This one certainly isn't worth missing too - the Christ Church on Ryhope Road, built to serve the affluent classes surrounding.

This one was constructed in the early 1860s, formed as the parish church. If you take a look at the third picture below, you'll see a shot of it just after it was built, with a haystack obscuring part of the transept. This is because this area was just beyond the denser parts of the town. Farms and villas lined the lane south.

It's composed of this beautiful rock-faced limestone and limed with sandstone - both copious in this area, with a tower styled upon the great medieval iterations. I'm sad to say I haven't been able to find a huge amount on this building, but it's quite clear plenty of money was piled into it by its residential neighbours.

This is especially the case when you consider they got James Murray to come in and design it - a Coventry man who worked in partnership with E W Pugin, the son of Augustus Pugin and both of which we've discussed before. This is very possible his only commission north of the Midlands, having very much been an influence on Coventry and wider Warwickshire.

The Church of England were sadly to demolish it in 1998, perhaps due to its cost and scale. We can certainly thank the Sikh community of Sunderland who saved at the turn of the millennium to transform it into a community space. If it weren't for other faiths and congregations, many of these historic buildings would be no more.

Listing Description (if available)

Parish church. 1862-64. By James Murray of Coventry; attached vestry and verger's house c1877 by JC Cundall of Leamington. Snecked rock-faced limestone with ashlar plinth and dressings of coarse-grained sandstone; roof pale grey slate, perhaps Lakeland, with stone copings; stone spire. Chancel with S chapel and NE tower, aisled nave with transepts and N porch, and vestry and cottage attached to W end of S aisle. Style of c1300 with cusped lancets, roundels and geometric tracery. EXTERIOR: large E gable has 5-light window with big cinquefoil under dripmould; sill string continues round angle buttresss with gabled niches; gabled S chancel chapel has 3-light window. 3-stage tower has roll-moulded arch on nookshafts to E door under crocketed ogee canopy, 2 slender lancets in tall second stage, and half-octagonal N stair turret with lancets and hipped roof; belfry stage has corner shafts and symbols of Evangelists above 2-light louvred openings; corbel table with angle gargoyles; high broach spire with lucarnes and angle spirelets. Gabled transepts have 3 lancets below roundel. Similar roundels paired in clerestory between shallow buttresses; 3-light aisle windows; head-stopped dripmould over moulded arch on nookshafts with crocket capitals in gabled north porch. Sill strings and alternate-block jambs to openings. Short corridor from NW has lancets and leads to vestry with one high storey, 5 mullion windows and high-pitched roof; similar window on each floor of attached cottage with gable to front, the upper an attic in the gable; set-back left square stair tower has boarded door in double-chamfered arch, and coped set-backs reducing it to octagonal turret with conical roof; tall chimney at rear of cottage roof. INTERIOR of church 5-bay arcade has double-chamfered arches on round piers with crocket capitals; similar chancel arch on shafts; scissor-braced roof on corbelled wall-posts. Chancel has shallow N recess, S organ chamber, carved stone reredos. Perpendicular chancel screen; Gothic stone pulpit with green marble shafts stands on 6 piers; alabaster font in Romanesque style. High quality glass includes E window of 1864 by Morris & Co., all scenes except Sermon on the Mount by Morris & Burne Jones; W window and transepts have c1866 glass in bright primary colours; N aisle, E-W, windows signed Alex Gibb & Co., 109 Bloomsbury, London; Atkinson Bros, Newcastle; C Baguley, Newcastle; S aisle also fine glass including the second by Kempe, commemorating Charles Kitson d.1881, and the first c1882. The site was bought from Edward Backhouse of Ashburne House (qv), who insisted there should be a good spire. Among wealthy men who contributed to the cost of building was James Hartley, glassmaker. (Buildings of England: Pevsner (revised Williamson): County Durham: Harmondsworth: 1983-: 451; Corfe T and Milburn G: Buildings and Beliefs: Sunderland: 1984-: 14).

Both of these Ordnance Surveys depict Ryhope Road, first in the 1950s and back to the 1890s. Mowbray Road acts as almost a suburban boundary between the terraced middle class hinterlands of Sunderland and the Victorian villas & townhouses which sprang up after the rapid affluence from industry. Christ Church itself is emblematic of this, funded by glass makers and merchants who lived nearby to use as their own altar.

Over the years, many of these villas took on new roles as the more affluent dwindled into the 20th century. Carlton House became a youth centre, Langham Tower a training college, Park House & West Hendon House hostels and The Limes a prep school.

It's worth going all the way back to the 1850s, with this map published a few years later in the 1860s. That border I mentioned earlier is now distinct, with the triangular crossroads forming the entrance from the south into this growing town. I imagine its location influenced the money piled into it, effectively making it an incredibly grand gatepost to Sunderland and embedding impressions of a town proud of its affluence and spiritual roots. West Hendon House is one of the few villas pre-dating the church.

Christ Church in October 2025 facing south west

The church facing north east from Hendon Hill House, with Bede Tower in the background built in 1851. Undated, but possibly 1870s. Source: Sunderland Antiquarian Society

A lovely snowy scene on Ryhope Road in the early 20th century. Unknown original source.