Hale Court And Attached Wall And Railings

Hale Court and attached wall and railings is a building originally constructed as a Methodist church and school between 1899 and 1900, and subsequently converted into a house and flats in 1989-90. Designed by William John Hale, it is built of coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings, featuring 20th-century plain tile roofs. It is constructed in an Arts & Crafts style. The plan incorporates a canted chancel, hipped side chapels, transepts, a nave, and a west porch.

The exterior features a chamfered plinth, a sill band, and coped gables. The east end has a traceried three-light mullioned window, and flanking it, transomed single-light windows with double mouchettes. The side chapels each have a single transomed window. The transepts have traceried four-light lancets with hoodmoulds, containing 20th-century openings below. The three-bay, buttressed nave has two-light square-headed windows with transoms and tracery on each side; the south-east window was replaced with a 20th-century entrance and steps. The west end has stepped flanking buttresses and square flanking towers topped with panelled sections under leaded tent roofs with finials. A moulded segmental pointed head frames a five-light traceried window with two major mullions. The flat-roofed porch has a string course and coped parapet, topped by a segmental gable. A projecting, segment-headed doorway contains double doors and a mullioned overlight, with angel-head imposts returned along the sides, sculpted by Frank Tory. Depressed ogee windows, repeated in the returns, flank the doorway. The church and school are connected by a chamfered segmental pointed arch with a hoodmould. The simpler-designed school building has a bell turret with a tent roof. The school’s east end accommodates a wooden Diocletian window with blocked openings below; single-light square-headed windows with double mouchettes are on either side. The west end features a hipped polygonal apse with three round-headed single-light windows with double mouchettes set high up, with further transomed single-light windows with double mouchettes on either side.

The interior church space features an arch braced principal rafter roof with three purlins and traceried spandrels. An external stone plinth supports a railing with two pairs of gate piers and gates along Northfield Road. William John Hale (1862-1929) designed several noteworthy schools and Nonconformist churches in Sheffield between 1893 and 1929.