Desmond Williams, architect of bold 1960s churches in the Catholic Modernist movement

Desmond Williams, who has died aged 93, was an architect best known for his imaginative churches within the Catholic Modernist movement; he saw four of his buildings listed in his lifetime, making him a member of the rarified “Living Listed Club”.

In the 1960s and early 1970s he produced more than 20 new churches, moving away from traditional layouts to more inclusive spaces in line with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. One interesting early example, the circular St Mary’s in Dunstable, was completed in 1964 for the Diocese of Northampton while the Vatican Council was still in session, but already showed the influence of the Liturgical Movement.

In an attempt to overcome the disadvantages of naves – but without going so far as to move the altar to the centre, as the more radical Liturgical Movement churches had – Williams laid out the seating at St Mary’s in a fan shape, drawing the congregation around the altar. The church’s playfully striped and crinkled ceiling, made of 600 sound-absorbing aluminium pyramids in 18 shades of blue and white, was inspired by a youthful visit to the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.

In materials and construction methods, Williams responded to the Vatican’s call for “noble simplicity”, and collaborated with noted artists of the day. One example was St Augustine’s, occupying the site of one of Manchester’s earliest post-Reformation Roman Catholic missions, which had been destroyed in the Blitz. Williams’s square design, finished in 1968 with £138,000 from the War Damage Commission, was conceived as a coherent decorative whole, with deeply recessed windows of coloured chips of “slab glass” in free abstract designs by Pierre Fourmaintraux, executed by Whitefriars Glass, and a fine Christ in Glory in the reredos, sculpted by the ceramic artist Bob Brumby.

St Augustine’s, along with St Mary’s Dunstable, St Dunstan’s, Birmingham, and St Michael’s, Penn, Wolverhampton, have all been listed Grade II.

Another striking work was Williams’s ship-like vision for the Seamen’s Mission to serve the sailors working in Salford Docks. Complete with expansive ballroom and swimming pool when it opened in 1966, it has since been replaced by a housing estate. At Ampleforth, his linking of two listed buildings to create a £5 million administrative centre and a brand new refectory allowed all 110 monks to dine together for the first time since 1802.

The RIBA Journal described Williams’s ecclesiastical work as “bold yet disciplined, characterised by a confident use of materials, proportion and acoustics”. Detractors of the Catholic Modernist movement, however, railed against its general tendency to produce “churches that looked like health centres, public conveniences, or even bungalows, while an extension to Ampleforth Abbey – no less – gives the impression that the Benedictine Order has merged with Holiday Inns,” as the critic Kenneth Powell put it in The Sunday Telegraph.

Desmond James Williams was born on July 7 1932, the only child of Sydney Williams, a draughtsman, and his wife Eleanor, née Waters. Spending his formative years in the Whalley Range district of Manchester, Desmond was educated at St Bede’s College, then moved to Xaverian College for the sixth form.

A visit to Norwich Cathedral and another to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight captured his imagination, and he trained at the Manchester School of Architecture. In the mid-1950s he joined a well-known practice of church architects, Arthur Farebrother, in Altrincham, where Williams’s early work nodded to the Gothic style, with pointed arched windows, or the Italian Romanesque style.

By the 1960s he had embraced a full-blooded modernism, and set up Desmond Williams and Associates with offices in Oxford Road, Manchester; the practice later evolved into Ellis Williams Architects, with premises in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Berlin.

As the pace of church building began to slow, Williams concentrated on the education sector, winning a Civic Trust Award for Holy Family Primary School, Burton-on-Trent, and Education magazine’s 1970 School Design Award for St John’s School, Daisy Bank, Salford.

St John’s School, Sefton, was the first school to be designed according to requirements stipulated by the Government’s revised national curriculum under the Education Reform Act 1988. At St Thomas of Canterbury Roman Catholic Primary School at Broughton, amid its somewhat unconventional layout, Robert Brumby con​tributed a ceramic mural depicting the murder of Thomas Becket.

Appointed OBE in 1988, Williams served as chair of RIBA North West and president of the Manchester Society of Architects. He described his passions as “AAM”: architecture, aviation and music – but in no particular order.

He is survived by his second wife, Susan, and by four children of his first marriage: Dominic and Sarah, both architects, and twins Andrew and Jez, both musicians.

Desmond Williams, born July 7 1932, died January 31 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]