St Joseph's Church 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 ...

church in Hall Street in

Burslem Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Staffordshire, Hanley, Tunstall, Staffordshire, Tunstall, Fenton, Staffordshire, Fenton, Longton, Staffordshire, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in ...

, Stoke-on-Trent, England, and in the

Archdiocese of Birmingham The Archdiocese of Birmingham is one of the principal Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. The archdiocese covers an area of , encompassing Staffordshire, the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and much of ...

. The building, completed in 1927, is

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

. The interior includes decorations by

Gordon Forsyth Gordon Mitchell Forsyth (1879–1952) was a Scottish ceramic designer and fine artist and art education innovator. Biography Born in Fraserburgh, he attended the Gray's School of Art, in Aberdeen and the Royal College of Art. Moving in 1903 to S ...

and his daughter

Moira Forsyth Moira Forsyth (1905 – April 1991) was an English stained-glass artist. Her father was Gordon Forsyth a Scottish ceramics designer, stained-glass artist, and teacher. They both made works for the St. Joseph's Church in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, ...

History

A building for Roman Catholics was erected in Hall Street in 1898, which had a church dedicated to St Joseph on the upper floor and a school below. A presbytery was built in the same street in 1903, adjoining the site on which the present church was built, after fundraising during the early 1920s, in 1925–1927. It was designed in Romanesque style by John Sydney Brocklesby, who was also the architect of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Tunstall. Work continued on embellishing the church for about ten years, and it was consecrated in June 1937.

Description

It is built of red and purple bricks. In the north-west corner there is a

campanile A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...

with four stages of slightly diminishing height, each decorated with blank arcading, and an open arcade on the upper stage. There is a round tower, lower then the campanile, in the north-east corner, with an open arcade on the upper stage. Between the campanile and tower, the side facing Hall Street is gabled and has a wide-arched central doorway with stone columns; there are three windows above, with similar arches and columns.'The city of Stoke-on-Trent: Roman Catholicism ', in ''A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 8'', ed. J G Jenkins (London, 1963)
British History Online. Retrieved 19 July 2025.

Interior

Inside, there is a

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and lower aisles, and an

apsidal In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In Byzant ...

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

. The nave has three bays divided by brick

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s, each subdivided into three by columns and arches. There is a flat

coffer A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, al ...

ed ceiling. The marble pulpit is inlaid with mosaic tiles from Italy. There is a marble

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...

decorated with pink and green marble columns and panels. Decorations were designed by Gordon Forsyth, director of Burslem School of Art. Following the suggestion by the MP for Burslem

Andrew MacLaren Andrew MacLaren (28 May 1883 – 11 April 1975) was a British politician who represented Burslem as a Member of Parliament for three separate terms during the 20th century. A member of the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, his passion ...

to the parish priest William Browne, that young parishioners should make decorations, Gordon Forsyth taught them to make to his design the 32 stained glass windows, and the ceiling panels that depict the coats of arms of the Pope and the Bishop of Birmingham. Gordon Forsyth's daughter Moira Forsyth created the painting " Christ in Glory" for the ceiling of the chancel, produced in panels in her London studio in 1935–1937. She made other artworks for the church, remaining involved with the church until William Browne's death in the 1950s."Moira Forsyth's Artwork for St. Joseph's Church, Burslem"
Version dated 14 March 2012 retrieved via the Wayback Machine.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burslem, Saint Joseph's Church Grade II* listed churches in Staffordshire Churches in Stoke-on-Trent Roman Catholic churches in Staffordshire Grade II* listed Roman Catholic churches in England Roman Catholic churches completed in 1927