Wolverhampton's Listed Buildings

St. Mark's Church

Chapel Ash


Listing:  1848-9, chancel late C19.  Converted to office use 1990.  By C. W. Orford.  A Commissioners' Church.  Early English style. An important landmark, especially for terminating view down Darlington Street from Queen Square,

Comment: From Queen Square the spire is well below you and in front of the hills beyond.  As you go down Darlington Street the spire comes more and more to close the view.  The church is now well surrounded by trees - which is why our photo is not from the Chapel Ash side.  The building just visible on the left hand edge (and now at the back of Barclay's Bank and in their use) was the vicarage (now locally listed).  St. Mark's Church Schools were also built in 1849 but were demolished long ago.

The church had 528 pews and 538 free sittings.  It is a Commissioners' Church only in a limited sense.  It cost £4,850 to build and the Commissioners' grant was only £250.  This strongly suggests that this was one of the token grants made so as to bring the church within the powers of the Commissioners to rearrange parish boundaries. The Commissioners would have had no other connection with the church or its siting and design.

This view (taken with a long lens from the top of Darlington Street) shows what the listing means by "terminating the view".

The trees are those around the church and in the ring road roundabout, so when first built St. Mark's would have been even more prominent.

In 1978 the church was declared redundant, and by 1990 a new church had been built and this one converted into offices (now occupied by a financial company). The conversion preserved the exterior in its entirety so that the building still fulfils its function in the street scene.

The interior was very largely preserved, with little internal division, and you can still see what it originally looked like. The organ was removed and re-installed in the Wolverhampton Grammar School's Big School.