Ashbourne Methodist Church

Ashbourne Methodist Church is a building dated 1880 and designed by John Wills. The church is constructed from orange/red brick with ashlar sandstone dressings and terracotta ornament, and has a Welsh slate roof. It is a two-storey building with a basement, and presents a symmetrical facade of 1:3:1 bays, featuring corner towers and a right return of 1:7 bays. The architectural style is Classical.

The building has a chamfered plinth over basement windows. Full entablatures are present above the ground and first floors of the facade, featuring terracotta roundels on the friezes and modillioned cornices. Nosed steps lead to a central entrance with panelled double doors and a fanlight with a roundel beneath an archivolt featuring an acanthus keystone, flanked by Corinthian half columns. Bays two and four have narrow round-arched windows with apron panels and moulded sills set on triglyph blocks, all within round-arched recesses with ashlar imposts. The corner towers have corner pilasters with panels of terracotta roundels and similar windows to bays two and four, largely infilled with further terracotta.

The first floor features Ionic half columns between round-arched windows in the central recess, with terracotta aprons, moulded sills, imposts, and keystones. The towers have Ionic pilasters flanking shouldered windows beneath dentilled cornices. A central pediment displays a dated triangular panel within the tympanum. The corner towers are topped with terracotta-panelled parapets surmounted by balustrades that link corner dies with draped and finialled urns. The right return features a tower, followed by seven bays. The central five bays have segmentally-arched basement windows and round-arched windows illuminating the church, with piers between.

The interior contains two aisles and pitch-pine pews with an end gallery. A later organ is situated in a coved recess beneath a basket arch, supported by Corinthian columns, accompanied by round-arched doorways on either side. Brackets are supported by carved corbels, and a flat ceiling with a coved edge is present, along with tie rods adorned with scrollwork.

The church opened on March 15th 1881, initially called the 'New Wesleyan Chapel'. The rear-right corner of the building connects to church rooms known as Central Hall, located on Station Road.