Centenary Church

LANCASTER

SD4761NE ST LEONARD'S GATE 1685-1/7/283 (North side) Centenary Church

GV II

Former Congregational church, now vacant. 1879-81. By JC Hetherington and GD Oliver of Carlisle in a free Early English style. Rock-faced and coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings, and slate roofs with coped gables and red clay ridge tiles. 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 Leonardgate has 3 wide lancet windows under gabled and crocketed hoodmoulds, above which is a rose window of plate tracery, a cinquefoil surrounded by 8 circles, also under a crocketed hoodmould. To the left and right are round-headed entrance doorways, of 2 orders with shafts; the boarded doors have elaborate wrought-iron hinges. Above the left-hand doorway is the tower. Above the right-hand doorway the gallery windows are a triplet of stepped lancets under a transept-like roof. The side facade to Rosemary Lane has 2 storeys and 5 bays, arranged symmetrically. In both storeys each bay has a pair of round-headed lancets under linked hoodmoulds, but on the upper storey in the second and fourth bays these lancets are topped by a circular window and placed under a gable. The tower is square and has 3 stages; its rock-faced stone faces have a pair of lancet windows in each stage and are slightly recessed between ashlar pilaster strips which carry a corbelled parapet with octagonal corner turrets with spirelets. The upper stage contains both the ringers' chamber and the belfry, and its paired lancets are glazed below and provided with louvres at the top; above them are 3 circular openings under semi-octagonal hoodmoulds. The tower carries an octagonal broach spire with, low down, 8 linked lucarnes, each with a circular opening under a gabled hoodmould and towards the top, gablets on the cardinal faces above a narrow band of two tiers of semicircles. HISTORY: built to celebrate the centenary of the Independent Chapel (now Trinity United Reformed Church) on High Street (qv).

Listing NGR: SD4782161830