CHURCHES

Chapels that became independent of the mother church a century ago will be referred to in the manor essays below. Space will preclude the detailing of short-lived establishments and of missions. In Aston Manor there was only the parish church until development in Villa and Lozells justified the provision of the brick St. Silas in 1854. Ten years later St. Mary's Aston Brook (also Anglican) was consecrated on Aston Road North: its flamboyant tower was added in 1882. St. Mary's R.C. Convent had been built on Hunters Lane in 1840.

A.W. Pugin leader of the Gothic Revival was architect of the pleasing Tudorish buildings to which he added the House of Mercy four years later. The Convent's chapel served the local Catholic community until St. Francis's Church was built on Wretham Road (Handsworth) in 1894. Aston's first Nonconformist meeting house, 1839, was in Wheeler Street. This Congregationalist chapel was rebuilt in 1863. Another opened in Park Street eleven years later. The Wesleyan chapel on Lozells Lane/George Street corner, founded in 1850, was rebuilt fifteen years later and twice enlarged.

There was an Evangelists' chapel on Villa Street in 1851. The Baptists' Christ Church in brick and stone was built at Six Ways in 1862, as was their Yates Street chapel. By then a Methodist chapel had been opened on Lichfield Road: this was reconstructed in 1870 and twice altered in the C20th. From 1868 there was a Primitive Methodist chapel in New Street. The stone-faced chapel on Mansfield Road appeared in 1883. Meanwhile a new Anglican parish had been created: St. Paul's Lozells is dated 1880. Its sandstone tower and front are replacements. Between 1879 and 1890 the parish church was completely rebuilt except the tower: the spire has been twice replaced.

Monuments of Ardens, Erdingtons, Clodeshales, Holtes, Devereux, and Bridgmans survive. South aisle and porch were rebuilt in 1908. The churchyard was fifteen feet above normal flood level: after the channel cut across the Tame loop east of the viaduct in mid-C19th had lessened the incidence of flood, there were burials in the former quarry outside and below the churchyard wall. St. James's Anglican mission of 1891 acquired its church on Frederick Road eight years later.

The Salvation Army citadel was built on Nursery Road in 1892, Lozells Street Methodist chapel in 1894 and its hail fifteen years later. St. Peter's Mission Hall in Berners Street is dated 1898. An R.C. mission of the previous year opened its church of the Sacred Heart at the Witton/Prestbury Roads corner in 1922. The Gospel Hall on Trinity Road dates from the thirties.

Index