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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.
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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.
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