Park Lane Unitarian and Free Christian Chapel is a Grade II listed building in the Wigan local planning authority area, England. First listed on 7 December 1966. A Post-Medieval Chapel.
Park Lane Unitarian and Free Christian Chapel
- WRENN ID
- crumbling-corner-sienna
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Wigan
- Constituency
- Makerfield MP: Andy Burnham (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 7 December 1966
- Type
- Chapel
- Period
- Post-Medieval
- Address
- Park Lane Unitarian and Free Christian Chapel, Wigan Road
- OS grid reference
- SD 568 016
- Coordinates
- 53.50984, -2.6518
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Park Lane Unitarian and Free Christian Chapel is a Unitarian chapel built in 1697, with alterations made in 1871 and a two-storey extension added in 1867. It features pebble-dashed brick with stone dressings and a stone slate roof. The chapel has five bays, with the western bay rising to two storeys and gables on both the north and south sides. It includes a stone base, weathered buttresses with decorated gablets, and two raking buttresses on the north side, along with a top corbelled frieze and two string courses. The windows are straight-headed with plaster surrounds and 19th-century glazing. There are three urns on plinths on the south side. The east facade has a coped gable topped with a ball finial, two round-headed lights, and a roundel featuring 19th-century stained glass. The western bay has two string courses, a segmental-headed entrance on the south side, and paired round-headed windows above with pilasters and archivolts. A square bell turret sits at the junction of the ridges, featuring open sides and a pyramidal shingled roof. The west facade has round-headed windows, with two on the ground floor and one with two lights on the first floor.
Inside, the chapel has wainscotting made from doors of the original box pews, which bear the initials of their owners and the date 1697. The arch-braced canted ceiling conceals the original roof trusses. There is a west gallery above the entrance hall of the school. The original pulpit at the east end features bolection-moulded panels and a brass memorial plaque dated 1775 from a chapel in Prescot. This chapel is noted as the oldest non-conformist chapel in the district.
Local climate
Park Lane Unitarian and Free Christian Chapel sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,050 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 85% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 77% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 30 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 65% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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