St Martin in the Fields, Liverpool - Church of England
St Martin in the Fields,
Silvester Street,
Liverpool
Lancashire
Cemeteries
The church has/had a graveyard.Church History
It was founded in 1828 and closed in 1946.The first stone of Saint Martin in the Fields was lain on 28th October 1828 and Consecrated on 13th January 1829. The Goverment had this church erected at the expense of £20.000. The entire height of the steeple was 22 feet. The extreme length of the church from east to west was 142 feet, and the width was 75 feet. The front of the chancel was embellished with a special Gothic arch. The steeple was 22 feet high. It was built of redish sandstone but it turned black because of the industrial area, (an Irish dye works was the main culprit for this)and it got the nick name of THE BLACK CHURCH. It was built on Great Oxford Street North, (now St Silvester Street). There was seating for 2000 parishoners.
Jim Fearns' memories of the church:
St Martin in the Fields was also affectingly known as The Black Church. It's graveyard was surrounded by four streets - Silvester St, Vauxhall Rd, Blenheim St (This is where I lived), and Limkiln Lane. St Martins was bombed during the blitz but I think it closed well before this. St Martins was bombed during the blitz but I think it closed well before this. The graves were moved to St Mary's Walton and some of the cemetery was made into a childrens playground and bowling green. The church itself remained a shell for years until it was demolished about 1952/54.
Maps
The church was located at OS grid reference SJ3457192047. You can see this on maps provided by:
- this church marked on a Google map. (Use this to report a corrected location)
- Google Streetview (Drag
pegman to centre of map to show picture)
- OldMaps
- StreetMap
- Open StreetMap
- Bing (was Multimap)
- Magic
- Vision of Britain
- English Jurisdictions in 1851
- Google maps showing nearby churches with satellite image option.
This site provides historical information about churches, other places of worship and cemeteries. It has no connection with the churches etc. themselves.
Help required
The information provided has been obtained from a number of sources and although every effort is made to avoid errors, just a few may be present. So if there are any please let us know. [Use the link at the bottom of this page].We do not currently have the following information, and if you can provide it then please do so:
- Do you have a picture of the church we could use? We don't
link to existing pictures already on the web without permission from
the copyright owner. If you have a .jpg or similar image then we can show it
on this page.
See the notes on taking church pictures.
- Have the Monumentals Inscriptions on the gravestones
been transcribed and published, and by whom?
- Have you any details about the history of the church?
Old directories frequently contain such information, and if you can
transcribe such information and let us have it, we can add it to this page.
- Who holds the records of baptisms, marriages or burials? Have any transcripts of the registers been published?
If you have any further information about the church that you think would be useful to other researchers then do get in touch.