Chapel At North Staffordshire Hospital

This is a former workhouse chapel, dating from 1866, and now serving as a hospital chapel. It was designed by Charles Lynam of Stoke on Trent, built of red brick with ashlar and blue brick dressings, and constructed in the Perpendicular style to complement the contemporary School block, also by Lynam.

The building is a single range with an apsidal east end, a stair turret to the northwest, and a west porch. It has a plain tile roof with a canted east end featuring gabled ventilators and a finial. A square wooden bell turret with a pyramidal slate roof and a finial sits at the west end. Windows feature stone cross-mullions and cusped four-centred arched heads with hood moulds. The apsidal end has regular fenestration, with blue brick diaper work below the windows, and a four-centred arched mullioned opening to a basement below the northeast window. The main body of the chapel has five windows to the north and four to the south. Gabled through-eaves dormers with gallery windows are present in the west bays on both sides. A tall coped stack rises from the east buttress on the north side, while a square lean-to porch with a shouldered door to the basement and a single window are located in the east bay on the south side. A crenellated octagonal stair turret occupies the southwest corner. The west gable is coped featuring a three-light window above a smaller light under a hood mould. The crenellated west porch has a four-centred arched opening covering two shouldered doorways, with the left doorway blocked; the right doorway has an original board door. This layout reflects the segregation of the sexes common in churches and workhouses of the period.

Inside, the chapel is rendered with a moulded sill band and an arch-braced hammer beam roof supported by corbels, mirroring details in the contemporary school block. A northeast window contains stained glass from 1920, while the rest of the windows have leaded glazing. A wooden gallery with blind tracery, supported by wooden posts, is located at the west end. Mid-20th century glazed screens and doors create small rooms below the gallery. A stone winder stair with iron balustrade is within the stair turret.

The chapel's fittings are all late 20th century, reflecting its continued use for worship. There's a wall tablet dating from 1983. The chapel's construction represented a significant step in 19th-century social policy, and this is an early example of a workhouse chapel of this kind.