St Columba's is a
Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
Parish church
A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...
in
Newton, Chester
Newton is a suburb in the north-east of Chester, in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. Including the locale of Plas Newton, the area is contiguous with Upton to the north and Ho ...
. It was built from 1964 to 1965. It is situated on the corner of Plas Newton Lane and Newhall Road in the suburbs, north of the city centre. The 'Taking Stock' project, a partnership between the Patrimony Committee of the
Bishops’ Conference,
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...
and individual catholic dioceses, described the church as 'a strikingly modern church in a distinctive style'.
[St Columba Church - Chester]
accessed 2 February 2017
History
Construction
In the late 1950s, a priest from
St Werburgh's Church in Chester, Canon Francis Murphy, came to Newton and started raising funds to build a new church for the local Catholic population. On 6 September 1964, he laid the foundation stone for the church. It was designed by Francis Prichard (1919 – 2008).
[ He was an ecclesiastical architect and was also the Mayor of Crosby. The first ]Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
was said in the church on 19 December 1965. On 19 February 1966, the church was officially opened by William Grasar, Roman Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury.[
]
Parish Hall
In 1978, the parish hall was also opened by Bishop Glaser. It was built by the Manpower Services Commission
The Manpower Services Commission (MSC) was a non-departmental public body of the Department of Employment in the United Kingdom created by Edward Heath's Conservative Government on 1 January 1974 under the terms of the Employment and Training ...
. In 2012, it hosted the Annual General Meeting
An annual general meeting (AGM, also known as the annual meeting) is a meeting of the general membership of an organization.
These organizations include membership associations and companies with shareholders.
These meetings may be required ...
of the British Heart Foundation.British Heart Foundation to hold AGM in St Columbas Church Hall, Chester
from '' Chester Chronicle'', 3 May 2012, retrieved 13 February 2015
See also
* St Werburgh's Church, Chester
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chester, Saint Columba
Roman Catholic churches in Cheshire
Roman Catholic Diocese of Shrewsbury
Roman Catholic churches completed in 1966
Saint Columba
Columba () or Colmcille (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Gaelic Ireland, Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He founded the ...
20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United Kingdom