Salvation Army Citadel (Former Primitive Methodist Chapel)

Former Primitive Methodist Chapel, now Salvation Army Citadel

This is a former Primitive Methodist chapel built in 1867, designed by Joseph Wright of Hull. The building is constructed of polychrome brickwork with stone dressings and a re-laid Welsh slate roof.

The chapel follows a two-storey Protestant auditory plan form, which is to say it is rectangular with a horseshoe gallery. Its gable end faces Queen Street, with staircases to the upper gallery housed within set-back bays flanking the main frontage. A single-storey rear projection, originally designed as a Sunday School, extends from the back.

The symmetrical principal elevation on Queen Street comprises four bays across two storeys, predominantly built of fair faced red brickwork enriched with buff bricks and blue engineering bricks, along with stone dressings. Stone steps at the front are a later alteration. The central two bays are broad and feature round arched entrances decorated with nail head work, supported by pairs of stone colonnettes with foliate capitals and bosses halfway down their shafts. These entrances are slightly projected forward and covered with hood moulds shaped as gables with foliate finials and decorative roundels below. Above each entrance, at first floor level, are paired round-headed windows retaining original sash windows with marginal glazing bars. A nail head band runs below the window cills and at the level of the arch springs. The gable above is pedimented with coping supported by distinctive corbelling and topped by a decorative wrought iron finial. The narrower side bays are set back and contain stepped round-topped slit windows at ground floor level (lighting the internal staircases), with single windows at first floor matching the style of the paired central windows. The decorative band courses continue across the side bays but are topped with hipped roofs rather than pediments, also finished with wrought iron finials.

The side elevations are plainer but still incorporate decorative buff brickwork, along with stock bricks of more variable colour. Windows are paired throughout: round-arched at first floor level and segmentally arched at ground floor, all featuring sash windows with marginal glazing bars. The chapel roof has a crested ridge and a central louvered ventilator. The single-storey Sunday School rear projection spans four bays but is shorter than the adjacent chapel wall. The bay closest to the chapel on the north side has a segmentally arched entrance with a replaced standard-sized single door; the other three bays retain 6x6 light sash windows beneath flat arches.

The interior has been altered by flooring over at gallery level, though the original curving gallery pews remain in place and the balcony front has been lost. The ceiling is coffered with decorative ceiling bosses featuring foliated designs in each recessed panel. Foliated plasterwork survives around the arch to the organ and choir recess. The original marginal glazing to the windows is etched with foliated designs. Ground floor pews are gone, but the columns supporting the gallery remain, as do the original staircases to the gallery. The Sunday School at the rear survives intact with its original boarded dado, exposed roof trusses, and a room-dividing screen.

The foundation stone was laid in April 1867 and the chapel opened later that year, replacing an earlier Primitive Methodist chapel of 1838 in Newport, which itself had replaced a chapel in King Street. Barton upon Humber lay within the Hull District, one of the leading areas for Primitive Methodism in the country. Non-conformism was notably strong in the town: in 1851, attendance at the two non-conformist chapels was four times that of the Anglican church. Joseph Wright of Hull, the architect, designed over 20 chapels for the Primitive Methodists in the region and was a pupil of Cuthbert Brodrick. The building cost £1500 and originally seated 600 people. The Methodist chapel closed in 1961 and reopened as a Salvation Army Citadel in 1965.