Congregational Church and Sunday School is a Grade II listed building in the County Durham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 22 February 1973. A Victorian Church, school.
Congregational Church and Sunday School
- WRENN ID
- ghost-marble-thyme
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- County Durham
- Constituency
- Bishop Auckland MP: Dr Sam Rushworth (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 22 February 1973
- Type
- Church, school
- Period
- Victorian
- Address
- Congregational Church and Sunday School, Queen Street, Barnard Castle
- OS grid reference
- NZ 051 164
- Coordinates
- 54.54327, -1.92192
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Congregational Church, now known as the United Reformed Church, was built in 1836 and features an attached school from the mid-19th century. The building is constructed of coursed squared stone with ashlar quoins and dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof that has stone gable copings and a chimney. The church is oriented with the ritual east at the south and includes a nave with a west lobby, an east vestry, and the school.
The exterior has a gabled front facing Hall Street, featuring a central wide double six-panel door with a semicircular overlight that has intersecting glazing bars. This is set within a tooled projecting stone surround, complete with impost blocks and a keystone. The flanking 30-pane stair sash windows, which also have glazing bars, are topped with flat stone lintels and have projecting stone sills. Above, there is a similar window, and an oval stone date panel in the gable displays well-cut letters, though the figure '1' is missing. The roof has gable coping on moulded kneelers and a small chimney at the rear. The elevation facing Queen Street has two similar sashes on the ground floor and two more at the gallery level. The rear school extension is a single storey with two similar windows in the gable facing Queen Street, featuring moulded gable kneelers and a corniced ridge chimney.
Inside, there are stairs on each side of the entrance lobby, leading to a nave that has a blocked gallery on three sides and an east pulpit. The curved gallery is supported by cast-iron pillars and features reeded pilasters with a panelled parapet. The ceiling has been altered to rest on the gallery parapet, creating a keeled shape. The pulpit is raised on a boarded platform and has blind Y-tracery in the wooden east arcade. The handrail has mostly been renewed along with the cast-iron balusters. The pine pews have horizontal boarding and panelled ends, complete with umbrella racks. There is a panelled dado that is partly raised and fielded, along with shaped boarded screens flanking two six-panel east doors from the lobby. A memorial panel on the wall commemorates Reverend B Wilkinson, who died on December 28, 1893, after serving as pastor for five and a half years.
Local climate
Congregational Church and Sunday School receives an average of 950 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 73% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 53% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 54 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 95% of listed buildings. Of these, 34 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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