Former Heaton Moor United Reform Church and attached Sunday School

This List entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 17/10/2017

SJ 8891/8991 14/181

HEATON MOOR ROAD, Former Heaton Moor United Reform Church and attached Sunday School

(Formerly listed as Heaton Moor United Reform Church and attached Sunday School)

II Former United Reform (originally Congregational) Church with Sunday School attached. 1896 by Darbyshire & Smith, architects of Manchester. Tooled rubble sandstone; Welsh slate roofs. Church plan: nave with narrow aisles and with steeple and porch flanking entrance front; transepts, and choir.

Exterior: west front with large four-light geometric tracery window set between two lower lancets, with three lancets below (lighting narthex). Stone banding and moulded strings. Steeple with double chamfered arched doorway, two-light Y tracery windows to first stage; belfry stage with belfry openings set in projecting faces battered above with gables (containing clocks) clasping octagonal spire, the angles between belfry faces occupied by attached shafts with pinnacles - a well-managed and impressive composition. Porch, separately gabled and almost detached, balances steeple, with double chamfered arched doorway. Side elevations with three three-light windows to clerestory and paired lancets to aisles. Transepts with three-light window. Utilitarian offices to choir ends; ridge fleche.

Interior: large space; octagonal piers with double chamfered arches to arcade, that to the transepts taller than the others; choir arch rests on corbelled shafts. High Victorian style furnishings with narthex screen (punched quatrefoils and trefoils).

The Sunday School with double fronted entrance elevation; each bay separately gabled and with Y-tracery window; gabled central porch. Taller recessed hall proper, also gabled with sextafoil in roundel and blind trefoil in gable wall. Side elevations in brick, quite plain. The hall/Sunday School is included for its group value.

A good example of a late C19 Congregational Church, built in a confident Gothic mode, with large uninterrupted internal space.

Listing NGR: SJ8806991887