Former Methodist Church

This is a former Methodist church built between 1900 and 1901, with a rear tower added in the late 19th century. It was designed by Arthur Marshall and is a building of group value. The church is constructed from brick with an ashlar ground floor and dressings, and has a slate roof. It is in a Baroque style.

The main facade is two storeys high with three bays. The ground floor is rusticated; the top entablature includes a central pediment and flanking cupolas. The ground floor windows have triple keystones and small-paned casements. The first floor features a central Venetian window with rusticated Ionic half-columns and archivolt, a large keystone with cartouche, a balustraded apron, and similar windows to the end bays with small-paned glazing and open-segmented pediments. Paired round-headed entrances have an Ionic trumeau, deep bracketed cornice and panelled reveals, with a central dedication stone. The cupolas are on square bases with hollow-chamfered angles and channelled rustication, two-light openings with lunettes, keys, and broken segmental pediments above entablatures, and copper domical vaults with finials.

The left return to School Street is similar in design, with six bays, the second and sixth bays breaking forward under pediments. A rock-faced basement has blocked windows; the ground floor has windows with triple keystones, and the second bay of the first floor has a Venetian window. A balustraded parapet tops the elevation. A copper dome to the east end sits on a round drum with channelled rustication and features four round-headed windows in rusticated aedicules between six-bay glazed colonnades, all with decorative glazing. The tower has channelled rustication to the ground floor, apron panelling, a sill course and cornice to the first floor, two round panels above, a pediment, a short pyramidal roof with wrought-iron cresting, paired panelled pilasters, two segmental-headed windows to the first floor, and an entrance with panelled pilasters and a bracketed pediment. The right return is more utilitarian in appearance.

The interior features a three-bay tunnel vault with groin vaulted aisles. A semi-circular balcony is supported by Tuscan columns with an entablature and balustrade. Ionic columns support the vault, and the dome rests on piers with flat Ionic pilasters and mosaic pendentives. The interior also includes rich plasterwork, glazed panels, a gallery across tunnel-vaulted transepts, an apse with an organ behind a large pulpit and a semi-circular rail, four hexagonal chandeliers, and a stained-glass window. A foundation stone from a previous church, bearing a brass plate dated 1824, is located within the vestry.

A parish room, dating from the 1870s additions, has Corinthian pilasters and pedimental surrounds to the windows and wall panels.