Modernist winners

Four of the top 10 modern churches are Catholic, it has been revealed.

The results of a competition organised by the National Churches Trust to find the best 10 Christian places of worship built in Britain after 1953 were announced at a ceremony with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace on Thursday of last week.

Top prize went to the Anglican St Paul’s Church, at Bow Common, east London, with St Mary’s Catholic Church, in Leyland, Lancashire, coming second. The latter, built in 1964 and designed as a “church in the round” by architect Jerzy Faczynski, is run by the Benedictines of Ampleforth.

In third place came the Catholic Church of St Bride’s, in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, built in the same year as St Mary’s in a distinctive, red-brick modernist style. Other Catholic churches in the top 10 include St Francis Xavier in Falkirk (placed sixth) and Sts Mary and Joseph in Poplar, east London, which came joint tenth.