St Mark's Church Hall

St Mark’s Church Hall is a former Sunday school and church hall constructed in 1875 to designs by William Watkins. It was later converted to a shop in the early 1970s.

The building is constructed of red and dark brown brick with stone dressings, timber details, and a slate roof. It has an irregular, L-shaped plan, consisting of a rectangular hall oriented north-south with a steeply-pitched roof, and a lower, canted cross wing projecting to the west under a hipped roof. A brick chimney stack rises between the canted projection and the main hall.

The design is in a High Victorian Gothic Revival style. The south gable contains a stone window divided into five lancets with three cusped lights above, under a stone hood mould. Above this is a stone plaque inscribed “HÆC ÆDES STRUCTA EST IN MEMORIAM IOANNIS WOULD LEE A D MDCCCLXXV,” with three unglazed slit openings directly above. The western edge of the gable is chamfered, rising to a moulded stone kneeler, with tumbled-in brickwork and a stone finial. The north gable end wall has a plain finish with an oculus window. A tall, gabled dormer with a finial and a three-light mullion window breaks through the eaves. Beneath this window, the northern return angle between the canted projection and the hall has been infilled with a single-storey, flat-roofed element, partially rebuilt in brickwork from the mid- to late 20th century.

The western face of the canted projection features a gabled dormer with a similar design to the one on the main hall, containing a two-light mullion window. The south-west face of the canted projection has a four-light fixed window with stone lintel and sill.

In the southern return angle between the canted projection and hall is a polygonal porch with a chamfered doorway flanked by small, single-light windows, and a carved stone crest of a bishop’s mitre above. The porch rises into a short, round tower with a conical roof topped with a square, timber belfry with a spirelet and finial.