Manchester

Gorton Monastery

Endcott Close, Gorton

Designed by Edward Pugin and built between 1863 and 1867, this spectacular piece of ecclesiastical architecture, officially called the Monastery of St Francis, served as a focus for the local community for over a century. Falling attendances (and declining numbers of monks) meant it was abandoned by the Franciscan order in 1989, and thereafter stripped of most of its contents by successive property developers, vandals and art thieves. A decade later the building was on the World Monuments Fund list of the globe’s 100 most endangered sites. Much of the pilfered statuary has since been recovered at auction, however, and the still-impressive shell of the building is currently undergoing a renovation, and is due to reopen in May 2007.

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