Our Lady and Saint Brigid
A stripped Italian Romanesque interwar design by E. Bower Norris, with a strong external design and a carefully detailed interior with flat arcading, and decorative metalwork. The sanctuary has lost its original versions, but has been enlivened by a bold neo-baroque mural depicting the Resurrection.
The Catholic community in the Longbridge and Northfield suburbs of Birmingham grew in the early twentieth century, attracted by work at the expanding Austin car works. In 1918 a priest was appointed to serve the Longbridge area, and a house at 26 Steel Road was bought and adapted to serve as a Mass centre. Around the same time, Mass was also said in a wooden hut at the Austin works and in a room at the Black Horse public house. In 1931 a combined school-chapel was built on land acquired in 1930 on Frankley Beeches Road, designed by the Rev. Frederick Askew; this building is still in use by the primary school. A presbytery was built in 1932.
The 1931 school and church proved too small and a new church was planned for the site between the school/church building and the presbytery. Designs were prepared by E. Bower Norris of Sandy & Norris, Stafford, and the foundation stone was laid in 1936. The new church cost £7,500.
The sanctuary was reordered in stages after the Second Vatican Council; the altar rails, pulpit and original high altar were removed in 1972 when the present stone altar was installed. The crucifix was relocated from the sanctuary to the exterior of the apse at the same time.