Westgate Road Baptist Church, Sunday School And Hall

Westgate Road Baptist Church, Sunday School and Hall is a Baptist church complex built between 1885 and 1886 by James Cubitt. The structure is made of snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings and features Lakeland slate roofs. The church is aligned north-south and includes a nave with ritual west porches facing Westgate Road, aisles, and a five-sided apse. The west doors are framed by paired round-headed open arches beneath paired two-light windows. A large curved triangular window is located at the peak of the gable, and there are paired two-light windows in the wide, gabled aisles. The high north-west octagonal belfry has nook shafts, a stone spire, and a wrought iron finial. The roofs are steeply pitched, with a five-sided hip at the east.

Inside, the church features painted plaster with ashlar dressings above a panelled dado, an arch-braced boarded roof, and Gothic panelling at the east end. The wide two-centred aisle arches rest on oval piers. The west vestibule is adorned with panelling and glass, and has a bracketed Gothic-style gallery above. A sunken east font made of cream marble with banded coloured marble coping is accessible by four steps on each side.

On the Westgate Road front, there is a two-bay gabled arcaded link leading to the two-bay gabled front of the Sunday School, which is designed in a similar style and features a right porch with a shouldered door. The porch has swept eaves and a pyramidal roof. Ancillary buildings are located to the north and are styled similarly. The hall to the north-east includes three tall nine-light transomed windows on the rear and east front, a gabled rear porch, and a steeply-pitched hipped roof with swept eaves. The interior of the hall has a gallery on two sides facing the windows.

Historically, this congregation traces its origins back to the 17th century Tuthill Stairs chapel.