New Life Christian Fellowship

The New Life Christian Fellowship is a former Congregational church built in 1876 by Bellamy & Hardy. The interior was largely refitted in 1991. Constructed from grey and red brick and ashlar with stone dressings, the building has a gabled and hipped slate roof and a distinctive cast-iron internal structure. It is executed in the Early English style.

The building’s plan includes a nave with aisles and galleries, internal porches and lobbies, and a south-east tower with a spire. Externally, it features a chamfered plinth and string course, a cusped first-floor band, a moulded coped gable with an arcaded corbel table, and dentilled eaves. The west end is characterised by gabled buttresses, a central five-light window with Geometrical tracery, and a moulded doorway with a niche above. A wheel window with stone tracery is set into the red brick north gable. The east and west sides have buttresses and segmental pointed-head windows.

The south-east tower has two stages, with a canted hipped stair turret to the east, gabled angle buttresses, a machicolated bell stage, and a foliage frieze. A moulded doorway with double shafts and a coped gable leads into the tower, above which are two quatrefoils. The stair turret features single lancets on each floor, while the bell stage has diagonal buttresses and single lancet openings with shafts and hoodmolds. The octagonal broach spire has a tier of lucarnes with shafts, gable finials.

Inside, the nave has five-bay arcades with cast-iron piers, round below the gallery and clustered above, with foliage capitals, moulded arches, and hoodmoulds. A panelled gallery runs around three sides, with a vine trail frieze. Stained glass windows are located at each end. A multiple roll moulded arch with a hoodmould and double shaft imposts, with foliage corbels and capitals, is found at the north end, leading to a pointed barrel vaulted roof with iron ribs, a foliage wall plate, and a fretted ridge ventilator. The aisles and galleries are lined with leaded windows and lean-to roofs with struts. The stairwells to east and west have wooden cantilever dogleg stairs with turned balusters. All fittings were removed in 1991, with the exception of the original panelled benches in the gallery.