Gorton’s great Gothic revival – turning a church into ‘The Monastery’
The friary church of St Francis is now an events space, while its cloisters lead to the Healing Garden
Alamy, Eric Latham.
The second of our series on repurposed religious buildings that have retained their spiritual aura features a glorious former Victorian friary and church in Manchester
These were Gorton’s glory days: but everything was going to change. Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, industry in the area waned. Factories closed, shops were boarded up, and the St Francis congregation dwindled. In 1989, the shrinking number of worshippers, plus mounting debts, led the friars to make the difficult decision to close their gem of a church and its associated buildings, and to seek a buyer.
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