St George's Church, Tyldesley

Up to 1789, when the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion built Tyldesley Top Chapel, the population of Tyldesley was dependent on the parish church in Leigh, an ancient ecclesiastical parish that, from medieval times, covered six townships. As the population grew quickly after 1800, a movement seeking to have an established church in the township developed. Thomas Johnson, owner of the Banks Estate gave land at the western end of the banks on which to build a Commissioners' Church. It was paid for by money from the parliament of the United Kingdom raised by the Church Building Act 1818, and said to be a celebration of Britain's victory in the Battle of Waterloo. £17,000 (equivalent to…

Sandstone for St George's was quarried at Peel Quarry in Little Hulton. The church was built in the Early English Gothic style with a seven-bay nave and clerestory which, according to Pevsner have, "unconvincing Geometric aisle windows and squashed Y-tracery on the clerestory". The chancel has two-light windows to the south and north walls and a three-light east window, all with geometrical tracery. On the north side is a vestry and a porch in the westernmost bay. The church is 112 ft in length and 60 ft in width. The tower at the west end has a west door and rises in three stages to a parapet with crocketed pinnacles and flying buttresses at each corner to a recessed octagonal spire that…