Kingswood Meeting House And Sunday School

The building comprises a meeting house and Sunday school, constructed in 1793 as a Presbyterian meeting house, with significant remodelling occurring around 1860-74 and a Sunday school added later in the 19th century. The construction utilises Flemish bond and Flemish garden wall bond brick, with stone and polychrome brick dressings. The roof is slate, featuring gable ends, with a stone coping to the front gable.

The building’s plan consists of a rectangular, almost square, auditorium for the original meeting house, with entrances on the south side. The building was remodelled in a Gothic style between 1860 and 1874, with the addition of a small chancel to the north, and a portico on the south front. The portico incorporates a mausoleum and a small gallery above. A Sunday school was later added to the north, at a right angle to the chancel.

The south front has a wide rendered gable and brick string-courses. A small, gabled, two-storey projection features a two-light plate tracery window on the first floor. Below is a mausoleum with a segmental dog-tooth arch opening and a moulded string-course above a raised roundel. Flanking porches have round arches forming an arcade; inner doorways have pilastered doorcases with panelled reveals and double-panelled doors. The central bay contains a mausoleum with a railed tomb. Above the porches are small plate-tracery rose windows. The east and west sides each incorporate two large two-light Gothic traceried windows. The chancel, at the north end, has triple and double lancet windows. The Sunday school, attached at a right angle to the north of the chancel, possesses large cast-iron frame windows with small panes.

The interior retains panelling from the lower part of the earlier meeting house, including a polygonal pulpit. There are moulded chancel and organ chamber arches, along with an open moulded tie-beam roof structure featuring arch-braces and carved queen- and king-posts. A Gothic balustrade and arch with trefoil pierced spandrels form the small gallery at the south end. Victorian furnishings include pews, a Communion rail, an organ, and patterned floor tiles. Several white marble wall monuments are also present, along with patterned stained glass.

The original meeting house, built around 1708, was damaged during the Sacheverell riots of 1715 and entirely destroyed in the Birmingham riots of 1791, necessitating the construction of the current building in 1793.