Farnley Hill Methodist Church And Sunday School

Farnley Hill Methodist Church and Sunday School

A Wesleyan Methodist church built in 1828 on Stonebridge Lane, Farnley, Leeds, constructed of coursed squared gritstone with slate roofs. The church is a tall 2-storey building of 5 by 3 bays. The central 3 bays break forward, with chamfered quoins and a first floor sill band. A pair of single-storey porches project from the outer bays, with doorways facing inwards. These porches feature traceried overlights, moulded door surrounds and round-arched windows with margin lights, cornices and blocking courses. The main windows are 6/6 pane sashes with glazing bars, plain sills and lintels: 3 to the ground floor and 5 to the first floor. The central ground floor window has been adapted from the original 1828 central doorway, and its outline can be seen. The left return has 3 sashes with glazing bars at gallery level.

A Sunday School building is attached to the right of the church, 2 storeys with 3 by 4 bays. The front right bay has been rebuilt and extended forward to the road edge, featuring Venetian windows to the front on both floors with a flat roof. The original Sunday School retains stone steps (rebuilt) up to a double door with overlight and architrave. The architrave carries an entablature carved with the words "SUNDAY SCHOOL / Erected AD MDCCCXXVIII" and a cornice above. To the left is a Venetian window with glazing-bar sash, below which is a panelled door with traceried overlight in plain surround with a 16-pane sash to the right. The right return has a blocked central door and double doors to the far right, with 4 first floor 30-pane sashes in plain stone surrounds and a hipped roof.

The church interior has vestibules accessed from each entrance porch, with stairs leading to the gallery and doors into the main body of the church. Two aisles divide a full set of box pews dating to 1873. Those at the centre rear have rails and curtains. At the front is a wrought iron and wood communion rail, behind which stands a table bearing a small stone baptismal font. The font has been cut to wrap around a double-height pulpit in panelled polished wood with a bowed central section and railed steps to the right. This pulpit probably dates to the 1828 rebuilding but was altered in 1911. Cast iron columns support a horseshoe-shaped gallery with raked box pews from 1828, including unusual enclosed sections with high wooden screens at the rear corners for private meetings or for children. Above the pulpit is an organ from 1892, set behind an arched opening. This housing and the vestry below were adapted from a two-room house at the back of the church. Two marble memorial plaques in the church commemorate members of the Pawson family, prominent local mill-owners who contributed considerably to the 1828 rebuilding. Thomas Pawson became only the second Wesleyan to become Mayor of Leeds in 1841, after the Reform Act of 1835 allowed non-Anglicans to sit on the Borough Council.

The Sunday School's first floor comprises a single room with a kitchen to the front. The ground floor caretaker's flat has been adapted in part for communal use. No original features remain within these spaces.

A chapel was built on land at Farnley Hill starting in 1796 and registered in the Consistory Court on 13 May 1797, opening on 5 June. Local tradition holds that John Wesley visited and preached in Farnley in 1761 and 1780, and a meeting was subsequently started at the home of William Farrer, a farmer. Records from 1797 suggest the original building was single storey and rectangular, with a vestry extending to the north-east side and a coal place to the north-west corner. The pulpit was originally on the south-west side, with a central entrance on the south-east side. By 1819 a school house had been built on the south-west side with steps leading up from the front.

The entire building was rebuilt in enlarged form in 1828 (though it is not clear whether any original fabric survived). The church area was extended to the north-west, a gallery was added with stairs leading up to either side from a lobby across the front, and the vestry was swept away and replaced by a large extension containing a Sunday School over a caretaker's house beneath. The Sunday School entrance was originally at the front on the first floor via an outside staircase. The pulpit was moved from the side wall to the rear (north-west) wall.

In 1866 a vestry with organ loft above was added to the rear of the church, possibly an adaptation of a pre-existing two-room cottage on the site. An organ was bought second hand from Sowerby Bridge church for £80, replaced in 1892 by a new organ from Brookes of Glasgow.

Further alterations took place in 1873 when two single-storey porches were added to the front, the staircases to the gallery were altered, the internal lobby was removed, and pews were installed to the ground floor. The upper dimensions of the pulpit were altered in 1911. In 1915 the clock and belfry on the roof were removed. The old school room to the south-west was demolished in 1921, and the Sunday School building was extended forwards and remodelled, apparently re-using the 1828 windows. Further alterations to the ground floor of the Sunday School building have occurred more recently. Two ventilators on the church roof were blown down in gales in 1954, and the pediment at the front was removed in 1968.