Gildersome Baptist Church And Attached Sunday School

Gildersome Baptist Church and its attached Sunday School were built in the 1860s, with the Sunday School added around 1887 (a foundation stone indicates this date). The church is constructed from hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings to the facade, rock-faced stone to the sides and rear, and a Welsh blue-slate roof.

The church has a symmetrical three-bay facade with a pedimented gable. The facade features a plinth and channelled quoin pilasters rising to fluted consoles supporting a bracketed cornice and pediment. A central portal has channelled pilasters, a deep entablature, a cornice, and double doors with six fielded panels and a margin-glazed overlight. Segmental-arched windows flank the portal, each with shouldered jambs, a crested lintel, and a sill band. First-floor windows have semicircular arched lintels, imposts, tall keystones, and pulvinated reveals. Above the windows is a small arched light with a keystone, bearing an inscribed date on a scrolled sill. An anthemion acroterion tops the pediment. The right return has six bays with square-headed sash windows on the ground floor and taller arched windows on the first floor. The left return is similar, with windows and a lateral stack.

The attached Sunday School wing connects to the fourth and fifth bays of the church, featuring seven bays with squared ashlar, round-arched windows and oculi in keyed surrounds. A porch is centrally positioned. The left gable of the Sunday School has a tall, round-arched, chamfered panel with recessed tall margin-glazed windows and an oculus. The left gable extends with a four-bay, single-storey wing, and an additional section dated 1882 is at the rear.

Inside the church, original box pews remain on the ground floor, alongside a horse-shoe shaped gallery supported by cast-iron Doric columns decorated to resemble wallpaper. The pulpit is finely furnished with panelled sides, and there is a wrought-iron gallery. The organ, by Fitton and Haley of Stanningley, Leeds, is housed in an elaborate classical case with three segmental pediments on the lower stage, a pilastered upper stage with a semicircular arch including an impost, keystone, pulvinated frieze, and surmounted by a triangular pediment. The ceiling is ribbed and panelled, with a central foliated boss. The school room has a barrel-vaulted ceiling with a king-post roof, brattished tie-beam, and single curved angle-struts. The roundels contain stained glass.

The site has a history as an early Baptist place of worship. The adjacent burial ground contains several 18th and early 19th century tomb stones, the earliest dated 1747.