← History & culture History & culture · Developing English

St Barnabas' Church, Mossley Hill

Church in Merseyside, England

2 min
estimated reading
6
complete sections
8.15
algorithmic grade estimate

Before you read

Use the article and the local dictionary together

The complexity label is calculated from sentence length and syllable estimates; it is guidance, not an assessment of you. Open any highlighted word below for its full local dictionary page.

Words
349
Native text
2537 characters
Dictionary match
80%
Revision
1354509770 · 2026-05-16T21:51:28Z
Key vocabulary

Words to check before reading

Overview

St Barnabas' Church is in Smithdown Place, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It stands at the junction of Allerton Road, Smithdown Road, and Penny Lane. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Liverpool South Childwall, the archdeaconry of Liverpool, and the diocese of Liverpool. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.

History

St Barnabas' was built between 1900 and 1914, and designed by the Liverpool architect James Francis Doyle. Before 1914 the congregation met in a temporary iron church. The architect died before the building was completed and the church was finished under the supervision of his brother Sydney W. Doyle. The church building cost £14,000 and, with the internal fittings, its total cost was about £25,000 (). In the 1960s pews were removed from the east end of the nave, and a nave altar and communion rails were installed. A small kitchen was added to the rear of the church in 1999, and since then more pews have been removed to create an open space at the west end of the nave.

Exterior

The church is built in specially moulded bricks of various sizes, with red sandstone dressings, and the roof is of slate. The architectural style is Perpendicular. Inside, the columns are in Storeton stone. The plan of the church consists of a four-bay nave with a clerestory, north and south aisles under lean-to roofs, two south porches, north and south transepts, a chancel with a south chapel and a northeast vestry, and a west tower. The tower has a west entrance, above which is a three-light window. The bell openings are paired with louvres, and above them is a cornice and an arcaded embattled parapet. The porches also have embattled parapets. The windows along the sides of the aisles and the clerestory have three lights, and those in the transepts and the chancel have five lights. The chapel windows have three lights, and those in the vestry have two and three lights.

Interior

Inside the church are five-bay arcades between the nave and aisles, and a three-bay arcade between the chancel and the chapel, There is a ring of eight bells installed in 2010: the six largest bells were transferred from St James, Waterfoot, Lancashire, and the two smallest bells from elsewhere.

Notable members

* Paul McCartney said on The Late Late Show with James Corden that he sang in the choir of St Barnabas' Church when he was young. A brass plate on the Choir stalls of the Church was installed to commemorate this.

See also

*Grade II listed buildings in Liverpool-L18

History & culture

Continue with related local reading