Wesley Methodist Church And Attached Railings

Wesley Methodist Church and attached railings, Bishop Auckland

A Wesleyan Methodist Church with attached railings, constructed between 1908 and 1914. Designed by Gordon & Gunter, with Thomas Hilton as builder. The foundation stone was laid in 1912. The building is constructed in rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings, using stone from Witton-le-Wear. The roof is covered in Lakeland slate with red ridge tiles.

The church follows a modified 14th-century style plan. The layout comprises a chancel with a south-east boiler house, north vestry and south organ chamber; an aisled nave with short transepts; and a west vestibule with a north-west tower porch and north-east meeting room. The building is orientated north-south.

The exterior features a high east window with plate tracery to five lights, the central three transomed with cusped tracery. Two groups of three stepped lancets appear in the clerestory, and three paired lights with simple pointed tracery feature in the long straight vestry window. The boiler house breaks forward and has paired lights flanking a door under a continuous lintel. Set into the boiler house wall is an inscription recording Brougham Place, a street of cottages formerly on this site. The vestry has a low pointed arch to a chamfered door surround and a plain window. The transepts are of the same depth as the aisles, with high transept lights similar to the east window. Four lower aisle windows are recessed in plain surrounds and have five cusped lights in pointed arches with long voussoirs extending to moulded parapets. Bays are defined by diagonal pilasters with crocketed pinnacles. The transept and vestry share similar parapets, with a raised panel over the vestry and a ball finial on the transept gable. The clerestory has four groups of three stepped lancets.

The tower comprises two stages, the second very tall. Steps lead to double boarded doors on the north beneath an elaborate cusped overlight in a pointed triple-chamfered surround with a flower-stopped dripmould. Polygonal angle buttresses to the second stage flank a corbel table with Tudor flowers. Long diagonal shafts lead to paired louvred belfry openings with cusped tracery and transoms. Clock faces are positioned above. A string to the parapet carries high pierced battlements with blind tracery panels and crocketed angle spirelets. The west elevation has paired arched entrances with boarded doors deeply recessed under triple-chamfered heads. The meeting room entrance breaks forward at the right, with a half-glazed boarded door in a double-chamfered surround, 1:3:1 stone-mullioned lights above, and rainwater heads decorated with Tudor flowers.

The interior contains ashlar arcades and an arch-braced hammer beam nave roof, with scissor trusses to the chancel roof. A dripstring runs over moulded pointed arches on chamfered piers with tongue-stopped bases. A high triple-chamfered chancel arch has ballflower stops to its dripmould. A similar wide Tudor arch to the organ features corresponding stops.

The wooden fittings include an altar with trefoil piering and a Tudor-arched reredos, a carved oak pulpit and lectern, and an oak font serving as a World War II memorial. The pews are boarded with shaped ends. The east window contains high-quality stained glass depicting a World War I memorial showing St George below Christ and the Centurion. Other windows feature central floral motifs. The vestibule displays the foundation stone in its west wall.

Walls, piers, gates and railings enclose a yard between the boiler house, vestry, Newgate Street and a lane on the south. The yard paving includes an inscription stone from a previous Methodist chapel dated 1842, in well-cut Roman capitals reading "Wesleyan Chapel Erected 1842". The rock-faced stone walls have chamfered coping. Wrought-iron railings and a gate feature panels in Art Nouveau style with bud and leaf patterns. Some railings were damaged at the time of survey in 1991.