Highfield United Reformed Church

BIRKENHEAD

SJ38NW ROCK LANE WEST, Rock Ferry 789-1/12/250 (South side) 28/03/74 Highfield United Reformed Church (Formerly Listed as: ROCK LANE WEST (South side) Highfield Road Congregational Church)

II

United Reform (formerly Congregationalist) church. 1870-71. By David Walker. Rock faced white Storeton stone with ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roofs. Southwest tower and spire, nave with 2 aisles and shallow transepts. West door with short paired shafts and flanking windows. 4-light Decorated window over. Polygonal side chapel to north west. Tower has clasping buttresses and short paired shafts with foliate capitals and deep moulded arch to south door. Tall lancets over, then paired louvred bell chamber lights with gablets forming brooch of spire. Bases only of angle pinnacles. 3-light Decorated windows to aisles. 4-light Decorated windows to transepts. Hall and vestry to east with apsidal east end, suggesting chancel. Squared mullioned windows to ground floor, 2-light Decorated windows beneath gablets over. Interior space modified by inserted suspended ceiling. Arcade of 3 bays with clustered cast iron shafts with foliate capitals. Eastern arch behind sanctuary formerly housing organ now partially blocked. Western gallery. Stained glass windows in (liturgical) north wall by J.Capronnier of Brussels, dated 1876 and 1889 and employing a highly pictorial technique. Further window in Pre-Raphaelite style representing Moses and St.John either side of Christ: dated 1876 but the central figure replaced following war damage. Complex series of lecture halls and vestries to east of church. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N and Hubbard E: Cheshire: Harmondsworth: 1971-).

Listing NGR: SJ3292086074