Avenue Methodist Church

MIDDLESBROUGH THE AVENUE, NZ 41 NE (4918) west side. 3/6 Avenue Methodist Church - II Wesleyan church and schools, 1906/08 by A. Forrester. Schools now used as church hall. Smooth red brick with concrete dressings. Welsh slate roofs. Disoriented, terms used are ritual. Short towers flank west end of nave with transepts and short blank recessed chancel. Former school adjoins east end. Edwardian Baroque style. West end fronts onto The Avenue. 2-stage towers; each has quoin strips, window in architrave in lower stage and oval window in keyed architrave in banded-rusticated upper stage. Casements with glazing bars. Modillion cornice and shallow parapet. Open-pedimented nave has applied giant Ionic Order with paired columns, enriched capitals and pulvinated frieze, on deep banded-rusticated pedestals and dado. Paired 5-panel double doors, up 3 steps, under common wood dentil cornice and fanlight, in keyed stop-chamfered surround under hoodmould. Round-headed recess above, with fluted keystone, holds Venetian window in Ionic surround. Panelled aprons, the middle with renewed applied bronze lettering. Enriched escutcheon flanked by festoons in recessed tympanum. Pedestals have windows in architraves. Towers have similar returns. 3-bay nave has 2 levels of windows with leaded glazing. Square timber and lead lantern on ridge, with louvred segment-headed openings in pilaster-and-open-pediment surrounds, and domed roof with ball-and-spike finial. Transepts have 2 segment-headed windows under wide round-headed window. School in 2 parts: 2-storey, 2-bay, and 1-storey, 5-bay, with similar treatment. INTERIOR: quasi-Composite octagonal colonettes, on square posts', support gallery with raked seating and enriched panelled front, around 3 sides. Tall round-headed chancel recess has enriched quasi-Ionic surround. Elliptical-headed transept arches with panelled intrados. Moulded ribbed ceiling, above mock hammerbeams and arched braces. Moulded wallplates. Boarded wainscoting to sill height. Slightly-raked nave seating with shaped bench ends. Panelled doors, in moulded wood surrounds and wood architraves under entablature with pulvinated frieze. Glazed screen to west lobby. Recess holds organ, with enriched panelled case, set behind choir gallery, with raked seating and panelled front, and canted panelled pulpit with carved and moulded undersailing and brackets on fluted quasi-Ionic pilasters. Flanking stairs have turned balusters, moulded handrails and fluted newels. Moulded wood communion rails with fluted wood and twisted iron balusters. Brass tablet in lobby records foundation and opening. Schools included for group value.

Listing NGR: NZ4913718332