Trinity Fir Vale Methodist Church

Trinity Fir Vale Methodist Church

A Methodist church dating from around 1890, designed by architect John Wills, with late 20th-century alterations. The building is constructed of rock-faced ashlar with ashlar dressings and slate roofs, and is designed in the Gothic Revival style.

The church is arranged with a nave with clerestory and aisles, a chancel, vestry, double gabled transepts, and a north-west tower with spire. The nave features a tiered octagonal ventilator. The building has a chamfered plinth and eaves with a string course, and coped gables throughout.

The chancel has blank sides, with the south side featuring two small lean-to projections. The east end displays a plain graduated triple lancet window. The nave clerestory is lit by continuous cusped windows. The west end is buttressed and features a graduated triple lancet with the central light containing plate tracery, with a smaller graduated triple lancet above it with round heads. The buttressed aisles extend for five bays with chamfered double lancets. On the north side, the second window from the left has been truncated with a pair of doors inserted beneath. The buttressed transepts each have a single lancet in the gable with blank sides.

The single-storey three-bay vestry has two double casements on the north side, a half-glazed double door to the right, and a door at the east end.

The two-stage tower has prominent angle buttresses topped with octagonal spires and chamfered string courses. The west side features a moulded doorway with hoodmould and tympanum containing a quatrefoil, with a single lancet above it. The north side has a hipped canted projection with three single lancets with hoodmoulds. The second stage has a double lancet bell opening on each side with linked hoodmoulds. The spire has a broached octagonal base with single lancets on four sides and a weather vane atop.

The west porch is buttressed with a moulded doorway topped by a traceried glazed wooden screen, and a single window in each side. The canted, hipped south-west porch has a double roll moulded doorway to the west with three single lancets, all with hoodmoulds.

The interior is rendered and has been subdivided by a late 20th-century block wall to create a reduced nave, meeting rooms, and kitchen. The chancel features a moulded arch with hoodmould, shaft and corbel imposts, and a wagon roof. The south side contains a moulded arch housing an organ. The nave has four-bay arcades with ringed cast-iron piers and a king post roof with traceried spandrels. The aisles have lean-to roofs. The north aisle includes a glazed internal porch with a glazed double door to the east, whilst the south aisle's east end has a moulded arch containing an organ and a double door to the right.

The church retains various 19th-century fittings including an octagonal alabaster and marble font, a traceried panelled octagonal alabaster pulpit with curved stair, matchboard benches, and patterned glass in the chancel east end. A stainless steel war memorial tablet commemorating both world wars is also present.