Westgate Hall Buildings

Westgate Hall Buildings is a group of shops, a mission hall, and offices built between 1900 and 1902 by Crouch and Butler from Birmingham, originally serving as a Wesleyan Mission Hall. The structure is made of rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings and features a roof of dark slates topped with a lead dome. It is designed in a Free Art Nouveau style and stands four storeys high with attics, and includes a five-storey tower on the left side.

The building has nine bays, with a prominent corner double door framed by pilasters, a frieze, and cartouches, all set within a quadrant-moulded surround. The ground floor has rusticated pilasters adorned with cartouches. The upper floors feature a group of four two-storey round-headed windows, characterized by long keystones and stone mullions and transoms, flanked by two-storey oriel windows in the first bay and the two right end bays. The building is richly decorated with carved Jacobean-style ornamentation, a dentilled cornice, and stepped gables above the round-headed windows.

The octagonal tower at the left corner is corbelled out and includes cable-moulded bow windows. The mansard roof is embellished with finials and chimneys featuring egg-and-dart cornices. The high octagonal dome over the tower is decorated with cartouches, masks, lucarnes, and a top lantern with a spike-and-ball finial. The foundation stones of the building bear the names of local Methodist circuits and notable individuals, including T.H. Bainbridge, J.P., and Sir W.H. Stephenson, J.P.

The left return facing Corporation Street has three storeys and six bays, featuring high broken segmental pediments above three double doors leading to the school and hall. The ground floor windows are tall and have double keystones, while the upper floors are styled similarly to the Westgate Road front.