Waterpark Hall (former Congregational Church, latterly United Reformed Church)

Waterpark Hall, formerly a Congregational Church and later a United Reformed Church, now residential use. Built 1872–74, designed by SW Dawkes. A robustly detailed example of Decorated Gothic style constructed in coursed and squared rubble with Welsh slate roof laid in scalloped bands and ridge cresting.

The building follows a conventional ecclesiastical plan with a nave, two aisles, transepts, a northern vestry and office range, and a southeast tower and spire. The three-stage tower features foiled windows and paired bell chamber lights with clustered shafts, angle buttresses with gablets and heavy pinnacles to flying buttresses, and a spire with lucarnes. The west door sits beneath the tower, framed with polished granite shafts and ball flower decoration to the moulded archway, topped with a steep hoodmould and paired Decorated lights above. A five-light rose window marks the south of the nave, with paired lancets over a trefoiled arched doorway to the west aisle. Three three-light windows serve each aisle. The transepts have angle buttresses and four-light foiled windows. A triple gabled northern range reads externally like a chancel but houses vestries with a meeting room above. Blind arcading carried on shafts with foliate capitals extends across the ground floor with some inset lancet windows, continuing around the entire north end. Three lancet windows occupy the east wall above, with a ball flower cornice. A five-light rose window sits in the wide central north gable and a three-light rose window in the right-hand gable. A canted apsidal stair-turret projects from the left-hand gable with a raking stone roof in two tiers and cusped hoodmoulds to lancet windows.

The interior contains a five-bay arcade with clustered red sandstone shafts on high white stone bases, foliate capitals, and ball-flower decoration in the deeply moulded arches. Arches to the shallow transepts are higher and wider. Curved principal roof trusses carrying collar beams spring from foliate corbels, with some wind-bracing over the platform. Complex timber vaulting covers the transepts. At the time of listing, a Willis organ occupied the west transept. A raised platform to the north features a panelled reredos with foliate capitals and trefoiled windows, with a five-light Decorated window above opening into the meeting room, glazed in 1885. Three-light windows from the aisles were originally open to the meeting hall but were subsequently glazed. The southeast bay of the arcade is partly filled by the base of the tower and divided as two paired trefoiled arches with an intermediate pier carrying a carved angel beneath a quatrefoil panel with foliate decoration. Original seating survived at the time of listing. Simple emblematic stained glass appeared throughout, though much was destroyed or damaged. Three vestries open off a corridor behind the north wall of the body of the church, with a meeting room above, originally intended to double as additional space for Sunday services, with the windows acting as unglazed screens.