St John the Baptist's Church, Atherton

St John the Baptist's Church stands in the Market Place at the heart of Atherton, a former coal-mining and cotton town in the Wigan borough of Greater Manchester. An active Anglican parish church listed at Grade II, it is a handsome late-Victorian building by the celebrated Lancaster architects Paley and Austin, notable for its tall tower — which, thanks to the mining that once sustained the town, now leans visibly out of alignment. With a history of worship on its site reaching back nearly four centuries, through three successive churches and the turbulent religious divisions of the seventeenth century, St John's is a building that embodies the story of Atherton itself.

There have been three chapels or churches on this site. The first, at Chowbent — the old name for Atherton — was built in 1645 by John Atherton as a chapel of ease to the parish church at Leigh, and was sometimes known as the Old Bent Chapel. Built during the upheavals of the Civil War, it was not at first consecrated, and was used by Presbyterians as well as by the Vicar of Leigh — a sharing of the building that reflected the strong tradition of Protestant Nonconformity in this part of Lancashire. In 1721, however, the Lord of the Manor, Richard Atherton, expelled the dissenters, who went on to build their own Chowbent Chapel nearby, and in 1723 the first chapel was consecrated by the Bishop of Sodor and Man. This first chapel was replaced by a new St John's Chapel on the same site, consecrated by the Bishop of Chester in 1814.

The present church, the third on the site, was built to serve the growing industrial population of Atherton, swelled by the coal and cotton industries. It was designed by the eminent Lancaster practice of Paley and Austin — among the foremost church architects of Victorian England — and constructed in two phases. The chancel and the first three bays of the nave were built in 1878–79 and consecrated in 1879, at a cost of £10,000, towards which the colliery owners Fletcher, Burrows and Company gave £3,200 — a fitting reflection of the close ties between the church and the mining industry that sustained the town. The west end, including a modified version of the south-west tower, rising 120 feet, was completed between 1890 and 1896 by the successor firm of Paley, Austin and Paley.

The very industry that paid for the church also threatened it. From 1899 the building was affected by mining subsidence — the ground shifting as the coal beneath was extracted — which caused the great tower to separate from the south aisle. The tower has since been stabilised, but it remains out of alignment and visibly leans, a striking and poignant reminder of the price the town paid for its coal. A further misfortune came in 1991, when the east end of the church was badly damaged by fire; it was repaired and re-ordered by the architect Peter Skinner in 1996–97, the re-ordering dividing the chancel from the rest of the church to create a church hall, adapting the building to the needs of a modern congregation.

Architecturally, St John's is built of Runcorn sandstone with ashlar dressings and a tiled roof, in the late Decorated Gothic style favoured by Paley and Austin. Its plan consists of a five-bay nave with a clerestory, north and south aisles, a two-bay chancel with a north chapel, a two-storey vestry and organ chamber on the south side, and the south-west tower. The tower rises in five stages, with octagonal buttresses at each corner that rise above the embattled parapet to form turrets with conical caps; above the south doorway is a four-light window, with clock faces in the fourth stage and four-light bell openings in the top stage, each surmounted by a statue in a canopied niche. It is a confident and dignified composition, typical of the high quality of the Lancaster practice's work, and it dominates the centre of Atherton.

Today St John the Baptist's continues as an active parish church, part of the United Benefice of Atherton and Hindsford with Howe Bridge, which also includes St George's and St Philip's in Atherton and St Michael and All Angels at Howe Bridge. It remains the historic parish church at the heart of the town, its leaning tower a familiar and much-loved landmark.

The church stands in the Market Place in the centre of Atherton, in the Wigan borough of Greater Manchester, in the old Lancashire coalfield between Wigan and Manchester. The neighbouring town of Leigh, whose ancient parish church was the mother church of Atherton, lies close by, as do the country parks and nature reserves created on former colliery land, the Bridgewater Canal, and the wider attractions of Greater Manchester, with the city centre within easy reach.

From a Civil War chapel of ease shared by Anglicans and Presbyterians in 1645, through the expulsion of the dissenters and the building of successive churches on the site, to Paley and Austin's grand church of the 1870s and 1890s and its leaning, subsidence-stricken tower, St John the Baptist's Church gathers nearly four centuries of Atherton's history into one building. A Grade II listed church at the heart of the town, it remains the living Anglican parish church of Atherton — a monument to the faith, the divisions and the industry that shaped this Lancashire town.