Centenary Church

The Centenary Church, now vacant, was built between 1879 and 1881 in Lancaster. It was designed by JC Hetherington and GD Oliver of Carlisle in a free Early English style, to commemorate the centenary of the Independent Chapel on High Street. The church is constructed of rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings, and has slate roofs with coped gables and red clay ridge tiles.

The building features a 6-bay nave with high galleried aisles under a single roof, and a south-west tower with a spire on the corner of Rosemary Lane. The gabled entrance front on St Leonard’s Gate has three wide lancet windows under gabled and crocketed hoodmoulds. Above the windows is a rose window of plate tracery, a cinquefoil surrounded by eight circles, also under a crocketed hoodmould. There are round-headed entrance doorways of two orders with shafts, with boarded doors and elaborate wrought-iron hinges. Above the left doorway is the tower; above the right doorway, the gallery windows are a triplet of stepped lancets under a transept-like roof.

The side facade to Rosemary Lane has two storeys and five bays, arranged symmetrically. In both storeys, each bay has a pair of round-headed lancets under linked hoodmoulds. On the upper storey, in the second and fourth bays, these lancets are topped by a circular window and placed under a gable. The three-stage tower is constructed of rock-faced stone and features a pair of lancet windows in each stage, recessed between ashlar pilaster strips carrying a corbelled parapet with octagonal corner turrets with spirelets. The upper stage of the tower contains the ringers' chamber and the belfry, with glazed lancets fitted with louvres. Above the lancets are three circular openings under semi-octagonal hoodmoulds. The tower is topped with an octagonal broach spire, which has eight linked lucarnes low down, each with a circular opening under a gabled hoodmould. Towards the top of the spire are gablets on the cardinal faces, above a narrow band of two tiers of semicircles.