Church of St Michael and All Angels, Northenden

The Church of St Michael and All Angels on Orton Road in Northern Moor, Northenden, in the great Wythenshawe estate of south Manchester, is one of the most remarkable churches of its age in England. Built between 1935 and 1937 to the designs of the pioneering architect Nugent Francis Cachemaille-Day, it broke dramatically with the traditional forms of English church architecture, taking the shape of an eight-pointed star formed from two interlocking squares. The great architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called it "sensational for its country and its time", and since 1981 it has been listed at Grade II* — a bold modernist masterpiece raised to serve one of the most ambitious housing schemes of twentieth-century Britain.

The church owes its existence to the building of Wythenshawe, conceived as a "garden city" to relieve the desperate housing crisis that gripped Manchester after the First World War, when great numbers of the poor lived in slum conditions. The city council looked to build south of the River Mersey, but the cost of land near Wythenshawe almost caused the scheme to be abandoned — until the social reformers Sir Ernest and Shena Simon, of nearby Didsbury, stepped in. In 1926 they bought Wythenshawe Hall and 250 acres of parkland and donated them to the council, greatly reducing the cost of acquiring the rest of the land. Shena Simon then worked with the planner Richard Barry Parker to lay out the area as a garden city in the early 1930s, and with the first new residents to foster a sense of community. The Simons' generosity enabled the Corporation of Manchester to acquire more than 5,000 acres, on which it would eventually build 25,000 homes for a population of 100,000, complete with greenbelt, agricultural land, open parkland and industrial zones — a new town spanning the three ancient parishes of Baguley, Northenden and Northen Etchells.

As the new garden suburb filled with residents, the existing small parish church of St Wilfrid's at Northenden could not accommodate the rising congregation, and a mission church was opened in 1934. The following year, on 10 April 1935, the diocese approved plans for a new parish church and rectory on Orton Road, to serve the district then known as Lawton Moor and now as Northern Moor. The budget was a modest £10,000, and Nugent Francis Cachemaille-Day — who had already designed the striking church of St Nicholas at Burnage a few miles away — was appointed architect for both the church and its adjoining rectory.

Cachemaille-Day's first draft, produced in June 1935, was for a church with a fairly traditional floor plan, with a choir vestry on the south side and a corridor linking it to the rectory. But in 1936 he produced a radically different second design: while the link to the rectory was retained, the main building was now shaped like an eight-pointed star, formed from two interlocking squares, and it was this bold and unconventional design that was built. The foundation stone was laid on 8 May 1937 by the Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend Dr Guy Warman, the builders were J. Clayton and Sons of Denton, and the church was completed in time to be consecrated in December 1937. The rectory, built to the earlier plans between 1935 and 1936, was itself unconventional, with a reinforced-concrete first floor and a flat roof.

The star-shaped plan was not mere novelty but a serious attempt to rethink the form of the church for the modern age. By gathering the worshippers around a central space rather than ranging them in a long nave, Cachemaille-Day created a building that drew the congregation together and focused them on the altar, in a manner that anticipated the liturgical reforms of later decades. The use of brick, the dramatic massing of the interlocking squares, and the spare, modern detailing marked a decisive break with the Gothic Revival that had dominated English church-building for a century, and placed St Michael's at the forefront of the modern movement in ecclesiastical architecture. Cachemaille-Day was, indeed, one of the most innovative church architects of the inter-war years, and St Michael and All Angels is among his finest and most daring works — a church that looked boldly to the future while serving the needs of a brand-new community.

The church stands in Northern Moor, part of the vast Wythenshawe estate in the south of Manchester, between the River Mersey and Manchester Airport. The historic Wythenshawe Hall and its surrounding park — the gift of the Simons that made the whole scheme possible — lie nearby, as does Northenden village with its older parish church of St Wilfrid. The River Mersey and its valley parkland, the suburbs of Didsbury and Sale, and the wider city of Manchester are all within easy reach, while the green spaces and community of the garden city spread all around.

From the visionary social reform that created the Wythenshawe garden city, through the building of a new parish church to serve its growing population, to Cachemaille-Day's astonishing eight-pointed star of 1937, the Church of St Michael and All Angels gathers the idealism and the architectural daring of inter-war Britain into one building. A Grade II* listed church described as "sensational for its country and its time", it remains the living Anglican parish church of Northern Moor — a bold modernist landmark at the heart of one of the great housing experiments of the twentieth century.