Eventually he obtained, on the Earl's behalf, a building about 60 feet (18 m) in length which had been built as an armoury for the local militia during the Napoleonic Wars, and the adjoining adjutant's house.

The Earl was zealous in promoting the Catholic cause following the 1829 Emancipation Act, and it was he who first brought Pugin to North Staffordshire in the autumn of 1837, initially as an architect and interior designer at the Towers.

Pugin also referred to St Giles' as "my consolation in all afflictions", and there is no doubt that the freedom from restrictions, the resources available to him at Cheadle and the enthusiastic support of Lord Shrewsbury, compensated somewhat for the professional and personal disappointments he encountered elsewhere.

That St Giles' increased in size and splendour as the work progressed was not just the result of Pugin's own enthusiasm for the project and his ability to prise additional sums of money from his patron.

In 1840 he made a tour of what he called "the very cream" of Norfolk churches, in the course of preparation of his designs for Cheadle, drawing details of mouldings, tracery patterns and canopy work.

In May 1844 Pugin visited the recently restored Sainte-Chapelle in Île de la Cité, Paris, a richly decorated private chapel built for King Louis IX in the mid-thirteenth century.

There were local alabaster mines at Fauld, near Tutbury, but instead of being quarried in blocks, the material was simply being blasted out before being ground up to make gypsum, the principal ingredient for plaster-of-Paris.

The sacristy was extended, and the "Rector's Door" on the south side of the chancel - planned originally to communicate with the priest's house - became superfluous when the location of the presbytery was moved north-east into Chapel Street.

When Lord Shrewsbury proposed to fill St Giles' with seats running the full width of the nave, without a central passage, Pugin reacted with characteristic indignation.

Pugin responded in half-joking fashion, accusing the Earl of penny-pinching, and heading his letter with sketches of a rood screen and a block of cheese marked "2d 1/2" a pound.

The process involved the working-up of Pugin's drawings into full-sized cartoons, and the production of accurate colours by fusing various pigments onto the glass in a kiln at controlled temperatures.

With the exception of the figure of St Giles' in the south aisle, which he had altered at his own expense, Pugin was generally pleased with Wailes's efforts, noting that some of his best craftsmen had gone to Normandy to make special studies of old-style glass.

The consecration of the church was postponed for twelve months, but by March 1846 Pugin could not guarantee even that, unless Lord Shrewsbury would allow him to keep a full work-force including joiners and painters.

The consecration on 31 August 1846 was essentially a private affair in which the building, its furnishings and ornaments were solemnly blessed by Bishop Wiseman, culminating in a High Mass.

The more public part of the consecration took place the following morning - St Giles' Day - when spectators gathered from miles into the streets of Cheadle to witness sights and sounds not experienced since the Reformation: the procession of ten Catholic bishops and two archbishops in full pontifical robes.

His busy schedule allowed time for daily Mass as well as morning and evening prayers at home, and he regarded himself first and foremost as a servant of the church as "a builder up of men's minds and ideas as well as material edifices".