Lytham United Reformed Church, With Attached Garden Wall And Gate Piers

LYTHAM ST ANNES

SD3627SE BANNISTER STREET, Lytham 621-1/6/9 (West side) Lytham United Reformed Church, with attached garden wall and gate piers

II

Congregational church, now United Reformed church. 1861-2, by W.F.Poulton of Reading; with addition at north end dated 1910. Rock faced yellow sandstone with some red sandstone dressings, steeply-pitched slate roofs with fishscale bands and cockscomb ridges. Rectangular plan on north-south axis parallel to street, with gabled entrance front to south incorporating spire at south-east corner. The south front has a large 2-centred arched 5-light traceried window; to the left, a gabled porch with a 2-centred arched doorway which has a moulded surround including a nailhead band to the head and a polychrome extrados band (the ends intersecting and run out to the gable coping); to the right, a slender buttressed tower which has a similar doorway in the front (to the gallery staircase) and another in the right-hand side (to the church), and an elongated and steeply-weathered 2nd stage which has a narrow lancet and is tapered to an octagonal section, forming the base of the spire which is surrounded by an arcade of cusped lancets under steep gablets. The east side has 5 narrow bays divided by full-height buttresses, with a lancet window in each bay; and a corbel table to the eaves. The roof has very small lead-clad gablets in the slope. The addition at the north end (containing vestries and a meeting room) is single-storeyed, 5 bays (the 5th set back), and has a porch in the 3rd bay which has a segmental-headed doorway with Perpendicular tracery in the overlight and a gable lettered "1910", and square-headed windows with Perpendicular tracery (3, 2, 2 and 2 lights); and its north gable wall has a large canted bay window of 1, 3 and 1 traceried lights, all these windows with stained glass in debased Art Nouveau style. INTERIOR: gallery at south end, apsidal organ gallery at north end, arch-braced roof, and original numbered benches with brass umbrella brackets. Garden wall, attached to south-east corner of church and returned along North Clifton Street where it links with the former Sunday School, with canted corner gateway: low wall with chamfered coping (former railings missing), Gothic gatepiers at the corner. Included as part of complete set.

Listing NGR: SD3681727298