Sacred Heart Church, Blackpool

Sacred Heart Church, located on Talbot Road near Blackpool’s town center, is the town’s first Roman Catholic church and one of its most architecturally distinguished landmarks. Founded by the Jesuits and opened in 1857, it was designed by Edward Welby Pugin in the English Gothic style. The church was enlarged to the east in 1894 by Pugin & Pugin, maintaining its stylistic coherence. Today, it is a Grade II* listed building-an official recognition of its exceptional architectural and historic interest.

Constructed of stone with slate roofs, the church features a four-bay nave, a striking octagonal crossing topped by a pyramidal lead roof, and an elegant wooden lantern with copper roofing. The west-end tower rises in four stages, adorned with angled buttresses and pinnacles. Inside, clustered marble piers with foliated capitals support the nave arcades and lancet arches. The stained glass includes work by Frances Barnett of Leith, and possibly by William Wailes in the large east window.

The interior includes a two-bay western gallery, two side chapels flanking the chancel, and an intricately carved white marble pulpit on red and black columns. Though the church lacks a graveyard, it is part of a wider complex that includes a Neo-Georgian presbytery (built around 1950) and a former school from 1898.

Since 2004, the church has been served by clergy from the Diocese of Lancaster, with Canon Robert Dewhurst as the current parish priest.