Fleetwood has a lot of Churches, we couldn’t cover them all without it being a much longer walk. And in an attempt to not just cover the centre of the town we started at St Paul’s Church. It was another day where before the walk it was pouring down but the walk ended up hot and sunny.
St Paul’s was built in 1927 from “stone blocks” which on closer inspection look like concrete blocks, but it is decorated with pebbles and split bricks, it is very Fleetwood which has a glorious shingle beach. The star feels very starfishy and emblazons the tower.
Next just around the corner is the United Reformed Church built 11 years later in 1938 I found the archway to be sublime, the hours taken to construct it. Whereas the previous church was built by church members this was was built by builders showing off. Both these churches originally had chapels in the town centre and the first United reformed church in Fleetwood started in 1837 just a year after the Customs House was built, there wasn’t much else in the town.
St Nicholas Church is that of an architect-designed space, meant to be a boat standing alone in the space. Designed by Laurence King and built in 1962 it is supposed to look like an upturned boat and the interior feels like being inside a ship, but being bank holiday Monday we didn’t venture inside.
St Wulstan’s Church marks the end the walk, near where Fleetwood baracks were at the time it was built in 1225-6. The building is very different with its brick and its iconography, with the shrine to St Wulstan at the front. It is very much like a traditional Catholic church that would have been built in stone with large buttresses and stained glass windows but squared off for the use of brick and a 1920s influence sneaking in.
On one side of my family there were a lot of brick layers, my grandad is a builder well into his 80s. So walking past St Wulstan’s there were these pillars I was fascinated by. The curved nature when everything else about the site is blocky. And it is this idea we want to develop moving beyond these workshops, looking at the smaller details that make a place, the sort of things people don’t notice.
These walks were made possible by funding from Arts Council England and Support from Healthier Fleetwood
