Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, Manchester

The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation — in Greek, Ιερός Ναός Ευαγγελισμού της Θεοτόκου — stands on Bury New Road in the Broughton district of Salford, Greater Manchester, and holds a national distinction: completed in 1861 in the classical style, it is the oldest purpose-built Greek Orthodox church in England. A Grade II listed building since 1980, it serves as the spiritual hub of a community estimated at 2,500 Greeks in Greater Manchester — particularly Greek Cypriots, British Cypriots and Greek students — with liturgies on Sundays, a Greek community school of more than a hundred pupils, and a church hall alive with the celebrations of Easter, Christmas and the calendar of saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The church is the monument of one of Britain's oldest Greek communities. Manchester's Greeks arrived in the early nineteenth century as emigrants from the Aegean island of Chios after the Chios massacre of 1822 — many of them mastic traders fleeing Turkish oppression during the Greek War of Independence — and they brought their commercial genius to the world's first industrial city, growing rich in the cotton trade. In April 1843 the community voted to create a Greek centre of worship in Manchester, and for the next seventeen years improvised churches served: sites on Waterloo Road in Strangeways, a venue on Cheetham Hill Road, a chapel on Wellington Street. As the community grew, a permanent home was needed; a site in Broughton was acquired, the foundation stone was laid in 1860, and the church was completed in 1861.

The architects were Clegg & Knowles, designers of many of Manchester's great commercial warehouses, and they gave the Greek merchants a classical basilica worthy of their success. The Pevsner Architectural Guide for Lancashire calls the building "a demonstration of the wealth of the 19th century Greek community. Elegant, powerful and purposeful, making a great show," and judges its carving "uncommonly well done." The front is of channelled ashlar with a three-bay Corinthian portico under a modillion cornice; Corinthian pilasters and pedimented windows march along the sides, and the original polygonal apse survives at the rear. The icons of the iconostasis were painted by Theodoros Vryzakis, a key figure of nineteenth-century Greek academic art whose work hangs in the National Art Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum in Athens — a direct artistic link between industrial Salford and the Greek national school. The church was originally crowned by a domed ceiling with a mural of Christ Pantocrator painted by C. D. Duval in 1870, but dry rot destroyed it and a pitched roof replaced the dome in 1962. From 2009 English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund funded renovations to the stainless steel roof, slating, lintels, leadwork and masonry.

The church belongs to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Its clergy have included some notable figures: most celebrated was Protopresbyter Konstantinos Kallinikos, archpriest from 1904 until his death in 1940, honoured with the title of Grand Oikonomos by the Patriarch of Constantinople, an honorary doctorate of theology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and the Order of the Redeemer from King George I of Greece. As of 2017 the community was served by the Reverend Presbyter Demetrios Kontelides, successor to the Archimandrite Nicolaos Sergakis.

The community the church serves has been renewed by successive waves of migration. From the 1950s to the 1970s Greek Cypriots emigrated to Manchester in numbers, some in response to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the continuing Cyprus dispute, and the 2011 census counted some 340,000 Greek nationals and people of Greek ancestry across the UK. Around 150 to 200 people attend Sunday services in Broughton, and the church hall annexe houses the community school where children study the Greek language and the culture and history of Greece. The church celebrated its 150th anniversary on Sunday 9 May 2010, with a sermon by Gregorios (Theocharous), Archbishop of Thyateira — a century and a half after the refugees of Chios raised the first Greek Orthodox church ever purpose-built on English soil.