Thorner Methodist Church And Attached Sunday School

This is a redundant Methodist church and attached Sunday school, built between 1876 and 1878 by C. E. Danby of Leeds. The building is constructed of hammer-dressed stone, with rock-faced stone, ashlar dressings, and a Welsh blue slate roof, and is designed in the Gothic Revival style. It features a north-west tower, a south-west staircase projection, a projecting organ housing, and an attached Sunday school at the east end.

The west end has a gabled doorway set on colonnettes with stiff leaf capitals, flanked by pairs of trefoil-headed lights. Above this is a band of guilloche ornament beneath a stepped group of three windows, featuring Geometrical tracery under a hoodmould, with a sunk quatrefoil in the gable. The tower is square at its base, rising to a broached polygonal belfry topped with a spire. The base has a doorway with a pair of trefoil-headed lights above. Angle buttresses are surmounted by squat pinnacles where they meet the broached polygonal section, with arched belfry windows on each face and diminutive colonnettes with gargoyles where they meet the polygonal spire. The staircase projection to the right has a matching doorway and a single trefoiled light above, with a canted-end and a hipped roof. A buttress between the nave rises to a short spirelet. The nave has five bays with a rock-faced plinth and two-light trefoil-headed windows with a quatrefoil in the apex of the arch, articulated by offset buttresses, all beneath coped gables. A lower organ housing has a gable stack, and a north doorway leads to the Sunday school at a right angle, approached by a flight of 13 stone steps. The Sunday school basement is rock-faced, with six bays of two-light trefoil-headed windows at its east end and coped gables with a stack to the left. The north gable features a large three-light window flanked by narrow lights with trefoil heads.

Inside, the pointed-arched organ recess sits on bracketed shafts, and above the organ pipes is a rose window with five quatrefoils (not easily visible from the exterior). The interior layout is symmetrical, with an altar rail, a semi-octagonal pulpit with a double flight of stairs, and an organ gallery with trefoil ornamentation. There is also a west gallery, bow pews, and a hammer-beam roof.