This thesis is a study of churches built for the
Church of England, in the dioceses of Manchester, Birmingham
and Coventry, in the years 1945 to 1970, with the intention,
of examining, first, the circumstances of their planning and
building, and, second, the degree to which those building serve the needs of their respective parishes today. The church buildings described in the study have been visited,
clergy or churchwardens interviewed, and archival material,
relating both to individual churches, and to the diocese as a whole, consulted where it was available. The study comprises three sections. The first is an introduction, which includes a discussion of significant factors affecting
the design of post-war churches, including the Liturgical Movement, the Institute for the Study of
Worship and Religious Architecture, in Birmingham, and
the idealism of the post-war era, both in the nation, and
in the Church. The second section comprises examinations of
the churches of each of the three dioceses, and a short section on other, significant, buildings, in other dioceses. Each diocesan section includes a description of the diocese in the immediate post-war years, examining the general approach, policies and administrative arrangements established by the respective diocesan authorities to cope with the range of challenges facing it at the time, and
then a description of each individual post-war church. The study closes with the third section, the conclusion, which identifies the great changes which took place in the approach to church building within a very short time span,
the demographic changes which have subsequently
taken place in the majority of areas within which
the new churches were built, the advantages and disadvantages displayed by the church buildings and
the range of requirements made of their church by parishioners, and, finally, the most important factor, the
freedom which the Church finally gave itself to experiment
with new forms of worship, new forms of building, and new
approaches to the whole work of a parish.