Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre

Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre is a former Wesleyan Methodist church and school, now in use as a neighbourhood community centre. The school was built in 1896–7 and the church in 1898–9, with both structures designed by the noted Leicester architect Arthur Wakerley. They were converted to community centre use in 1974–5, and have since served thousands of weekly users.

Both buildings are designed in Baroque style, incorporating Italian and Low Countries elements with some Byzantine details. They are constructed in red brick with terracotta and stone dressings, beneath slate roofs.

The church front faces Belgrave Road and presents an aedicule front of three bays and three storeys with pilasters rising through the storeys. The central projecting entrance features a round-arched doorway with double doors and fanlight. The entrance surround is finished with rusticated terracotta panels. Lower double doors occupy the bays to either side, with paired arched windows above them. The upper storey displays windows in a 1:3:1 arrangement, above which rises a large central rose window with a banded arch. This is framed by paired pilasters supporting an open pediment topped with an acroterion and surmounted by a large angel. To either side of the central bay are blank panels bordered by pilasters that support a parapet and lower acroteria. Flanking the central aedicule are lower two-storey elements each containing single windows with smaller arched ones above.

The church's side elevation, which measures two storeys, is characterised by windows with flat-arched lintels below pairs of arched windows set between buttresses. These buttresses continue upward as angled shafts supporting a series of terracotta ball finials, with sections of downward-curving parapet between them. The wider bay to the right at the corner contains a single window with a row of windows above, its parapet curving upward.

The former school front, positioned to the left, features three facing gables. The large central gable spans three windows, with slightly smaller projecting gables either side. Each of these side gables contains a Venetian window over a doorcase with an open pediment and a round-arched window with banded lintels. These same round-arched windows with banded lintels are replicated in the central three windows at ground level. The tall windows above have flat heads with friezes, cornices and strapwork cresting. A gable feature above displays a pair of arches supporting a broken swan-neck pediment with cartouche and a low lantern. The wall at the left end is blank.

The interior of the former worship area now functions as the main hall and theatre. It retains the original gallery, which is supported on a series of thin iron columns and features a front with part-panelled, part-openwork balustrade. The gallery has an unusually elongated octagonal shape, with original seating rising in tiers behind the balustrade and further rows positioned behind the Belgrave Road front. The rose window and the upper parts of the three windows below are all filled with coloured glass and decorative leading. Both in the gallery and at ground level, original doors and matchboarded dados survive. The roof structure comprises a number of curving steel trusses with criss-cross latticing.

Elsewhere in the buildings, some alterations and subdivisions have been made, though staircases remain, including one in a curving stairwell. Further dados are present, and a boarded polygonal roof survives in the former school hall.

The Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre was originally known as Belgrave Hall Wesleyan Methodist church and the Mantle Memorial School. The foundation stone of the Mantle building was laid in 1896, and it opened in May 1897. This first building served the dual function of chapel and Sunday school, with the entrance on Rothley Street. It was named in memory of Robert Mantle, one of the original trustees and first superintendent of the school. Construction of the adjoining church, attached to the original building and fronting Belgrave Road, began in 1898 in response to the growing population of the area. It opened in February 1899. Both church and school closed in 1974 and were subsequently converted into the neighbourhood community centre.