St Stephen’s Church, Salford (1957)

Lowry’s St Stephen’s Church, Salford (1957) shows a typical south Lancashire church building, blackened by the soot and smog of industrial townscape. The artist not infrequently included such buildings in his work, but they are often shown at the dead-end of streets, their doors invariably closed. People passing by never go in or out and just walk past, hunched over, without noticing them. We sometimes think of the fifties as the last ‘Christian decade’, but Lowry must have noticed - or did he prophesy? – emerging trends which would see Britons ignore the Church, its blackened, polluted buildings silently decaying into an empty obsolescence. This certainly seems to be the case in the 2020s: those ecclesiastic buildings have been converted to flats, shops, bingo halls, pubs and mosques. Are the people who walk past them any less stooped and weary? Any happier or better fulfilled? No, they are worse off then ever.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Isaiah 55:2

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