St John and St Mary Magdalene Church, Goldthorpe

St John the Evangelist and St Mary Magdalene Church is a parish church in the Church of England Diocese of Sheffield in Goldthorpe, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England.BackgroundThe Church of St John the Evangelist and St Mary Magdalene, in Goldthorpe, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England was built in 1916. It is an early example of a ferro-concrete building and is now a Grade II listed building.Commissioned by Charles Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, a former owner of Hickleton Hall, it was designed by Alfred Young Nutt in 1914. Nutt had been recently forcibly retired as Surveyor to the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel, Windsor. Its strange Italian style is unique in this part of South Yorkshire and is distinctly odd for a Dearne Valley mining village.It was the first large church in England to be built almost entirely in reinforced concrete, including all the principal internal furnishings within the church (which are of finely-finished concrete), the Presbytery, which is attached to the church, and even the boundary walls. The experimental nature of this construction, however, meant that the composition of the concrete allowed acidic water to leach through and rust the metal core of the walls. By the 1990s the church structure was showing significant signs of degradation and had to be substantially reinforced, with the Heritage Lottery Fund part-funding the repairs. The church was re-hallowed in June 2002.