St. Charles' Borromeo Church, Liverpool

St Charles Borromeo Church is a Catholic place of worship located on Aigburth Road. Serving the parish of Aigburth Road, the church is equidistant between Sefton Park and the River Mersey, in the southern suburbs of Liverpool. It is named after Saint Charles Borromeo, a medieval Italian priest who famously walked through the streets of Milan with a hangman’s noose around his neck, at the height of the city’s battle with the plague. The church’s statue of Borromeo comes complete with the noose.

Liverpool has one of the largest Catholic populations of any UK city, as a result of extensive Irish and European migration in the 19th century. The church was founded in 1899 to provide a larger home for the city’s growing Catholic congregation. A traditionally Victorian, Gothic Revival style building, Saint Charles Borromeo Church was a benificiary of a strong Liverpudlian tradition – the use of council and private funds to enhance the city’s public buildings and places of worship as much as possible. It replaced an earlier church, made of iron, which stood for twenty years before being moved wholesale to the nearby town of Wigan. A traditional Catholic church to this day, Saint Charles Borromeo holds mass each Sunday and has special services for all Christian festivals.