C20 Churches

This database was initially compiled by the C20 Society, with the aid of a grant from Historic England, in 2014. C20 churches are incredibly varied and interesting, and many remain under appreciated and little studied. They range from traditional styles (including Gothic and Byzantine) to modern designs with structurally innovative features such as concrete hyperbolic paraboloid roofs and laminated timber beams. Many also have wonderful fittings, including stained glass, fonts, C20th sculpture, murals, tilework, mosaics and tapestries, frequently in rich, jewel-like colours. Yet these inspirational and significant buildings are often not yet listed as buildings of architectural or historic interest, and lack protection from demolition or damaging alteration.

In 2013 we were pleased to participate in an awards programme organised by the National Churches Trust to recognise the best modern churches of the last 60 years. Such initiatives, targeted research projects and this database should help draw attention to our incredibly rich heritage of C20th churches. For C20 it has become an invaluable tool helping us with our casework and in planning our trips to visit C20 buildings in different areas of the country.

We hope that you will find it useful and interesting too. You can browse or search the list of churches below (search categories are (church name, architect, location, denomination, listing grade or date of completion –and these can be applied individually or in any combination. You can also choose whether to display the results in date or alphabetical order. The listing grade search includes both the English Grade I, II & II* and the equivalent grades in Scotland (A, B and C) and Northern Ireland (A, B+ and B). So you can find out about a particular church or, say, all the C20th Roman Catholic churches in Liverpool or Grade I listed C20 churches in London.

Despite our best efforts, there may well be things that we have got wrong, or churches we have missed, and we’d be glad to hear from you with any corrections or additions to the database. Please email website@c20society.org.uk if you have any corrections, comments or contributions. That way you will be helping us to ensure that this resource will become ever more comprehensive and accurate.

We hope to include photographs of the churches in due course, so if you have images of any of these churches that you would be happy for us to use, please send them (as good quality JPEGs)  to the same address.

If you know of a C20th church that is under threat of damaging alteration or demolition please email our Conservation Advisors at caseworker@c20society.org.uk.

We are most grateful to Historic England for the grant and support they gave us to undertake this project, and to researcher Luke Jacob, C20 Trustees Robert Drake and Barry Arden, Jennie Walmsley and other C20 volunteers for their work on it. The database is based on the Gazetteer of Places of Christian Worship 1914-1990, compiled by a team led by Elain Harwood and Andy Foster, which was published in C20 Journal 3, The Twentieth Century Church in 1998.

Publications and databases which have been invaluable in expanding this include the Pevsner Architectural Guides, published by Yale University Press, research undertaken by the Architectural History Practice on Roman Catholic churches for “Taking Stock”, Scotland’s Churches Scheme series Sacred Places and RIAS Illustrated Architectural Guides.

Each entry gives the architect and location, and the icons on the left show listing status. Where available, we have included links to more detailed online information about individual churches such as the English Heritage listing descriptions or our own “building of the Month” features. We hope you will find some of your own favourites here and discover some new buildings too.