Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Hindsford 1.33

Sacred Heart Church is a Grade II listed redundant Roman Catholic church on Tyldesley Road, Hindsford, Atherton in Greater Manchester, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.HistoryThe Roman Catholic parish was established in the 19th century to serve Irish immigrant families who moved to the area to work in the cotton mills and coal mines. The church was built on a site donated by Lord Lilford. John Holland of the Tyldesley Coal Company provided materials to build the church which was consecrated by the Bishop of Liverpool, Alexander Goss in 1869. A separate presbytery, built around the same time, was linked to the church in matching materials by 1894. Sacred Heart School opened in 1888. It was demolished by 2000. The church closed for worship in 2004.Sacred Heart's parish together with St Richard's in Atherton which opened in 1928, Holy Family in Boothstown, St Ambrose Barlow in Astley, St Gabriel's, Higher Folds in Leigh are united as a single community with St Margaret Clitherow as its patron.ArchitectureThe church was built to the design of architect Edmund Kirby of Birkenhead and was extended soon after completion and altered in the 20th century. It is built in the Early English style in squared rubble sandstone with red ashlar sandstone dressings, decorative banding, coped gables with cross finials and its roof is laid in bands of blue and grey fish-scale slates. Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as a "pretty church".