Baptist Church

Baptist Church

This Baptist Church was built between 1845 and 1846, designed by John Dobson of North Shields. It is constructed in the Neo-Norman style.

The church is built of coursed sandstone ashlar with a pitched slate roof. The building is rectangular on plan and faces Howard Street, with its gable end to the east.

The main east elevation presents a symmetrical two-storey street frontage with three bays. A raised plinth, string course, capped buttresses and a roll-moulded gable coping with rectangular kneelers articulate the facade. Tall inner buttresses emphasise the wide central bay, which features a gabled porch. A porch flanks either side of this central bay. The main doorway is set within the gabled porch beneath a round-headed roll-moulded arch, supported on a single nook shaft either side. The chamfered inner arch bears an incised and painted inscription reading "BAPTIST + CHAPEL / MDCCCXLVI". Above the doorway stands the cast-iron base of a gas lamp, with shaped iron railings and steps rising to a two-leaf wooden door decorated with foliated strapwork hinges. On either side of the porch is a narrow round-headed single-pane window. Above the string course, a central three-light window with similar roll-moulded arches and nook shafts forms the upper centrepiece. The outer bays contain simplified versions of these windows: a round-headed single-pane window below and a similar three-light window above.

The north and south blind returns are of sandstone rubble, with terraced houses abutting both sides. The rear western elevation is of sandstone rubble with ashlar quoins and is lit by four round-headed windows in quoined openings, with the central pair taller than the outer pair.

The interior follows the typical Nonconformist plan-type, with the pulpit and baptistery originally positioned at the west end. A small entrance vestibule contains narrow north and south stairs leading to the gallery and a central round-headed west window opening into the church, with aisle doorways either side. The church now features a late-20th-century communion platform and reading desk positioned over the former mid-19th-century baptistery. Galleries run along the north, south and east sides of the church. The gallery front is decorated with raised-moulded panels and chevron carving under the handrail, with a clock set in the centre of the east gallery front.

The gallery is supported on cast-iron columns with ribbed capitals on the ground floor and more elaborate Ionic capitals on the first floor. The first-floor columns support, with bracing, two arcade plates running from the front to the back of the building. These in turn carry king-post trusses over the church nave. The principal rafters of the side aisles have braces rising from decorative wooden corbels, providing additional structural strength. The plaster ceiling dates from the early 20th century and features a decorative ventilation roundel. A former changing room to the north of the pulpit now functions as an office. Three blocked windows at the south end of the west wall indicate the location of another former changing room.