Former Holly Mount United Reformed Church, with balcony, steps, gates and boundary walls, Great Malvern

A Congregational church of 1875 designed by James Tait of Leicester.

Materials

The walls are constructed of Cradley stone with Bath stone dressings and red colour-wash over the mortar joints. Internally, Forest of Dean stone is used for the columns dividing the aisles from the nave. The roof is covered with Broseley clay tiles.

Plan and Setting

The church has a rectangular nave with projections at right angles to the corners. The nave roof is pitched, with catslide roofs covering the aisles. The building is oriented roughly north-south with a tower at the north-east corner and a block of ancillary rooms containing a vestry to the south. The vestry room block is two storeys under a pitched roof with gable ends to east and west, linked to the nave by a lower-height section.

The church is built into the hillside, presenting three storeys to the east elevation facing Worcester Road. The top level houses the nave, the floor below contains the school room and further ancillary rooms, and the lowest floor is largely void except for access stairs and small storage and ancillary rooms. A path enclosed variously by stone and brick walls, a wooden fence and iron railings surrounds the church. A stairway rises from Queen's Drive in the north to the entrance lobby in the north elevation.

Exterior

The walls are rock-faced Cradley stone laid to courses. The roofs are clay tile and pitched, except for the north-west corner projection which is hipped. The nave roof has cockcomb ridge tiles and most gable apices have finials. Door and window surrounds and window tracery are in Bath stone. The tracery is largely Geometric Decorated Gothic style bar tracery, though some smaller windows use plate tracery. Most windows have pointed arch heads, but ogee and four-centred arch heads also appear. Square-headed windows in chamfered frames with stone mullions are used mainly for ancillary rooms and stair lights.

North Elevation

The north elevation consists of three sections from east to west: the tower, the gable end of the pitched-roof central section containing the nave and lobby, then the ancillary rooms at the north end of the west aisle. The central section has two pairs of lancet windows either side of the foundation stone, each pair under a larger pointed stone arch set into the wall. The foundation stone is inscribed 'LAID BY / TR HILL ESQ MP / 29 SEP 1875'. Above the lancet pairs is the tall north window with geometric tracery under a hood mould. A horizontal drip mould runs beneath this main window. In the apex of the gable is a plate tracery quatrefoil.

At first floor level, a round turret decorated with a drip mould and a blind arcade of trefoil-headed arches rises from the north-western corner of the central section, with a capped buttress below the turret. West of the turret, and north of the ancillary rooms to the west of the lobby and north of the west aisle, is a pitched-roof porch with double doors to the lobby. This door is set in a concentric arch surround under a hood mould. Rising behind the porch is the hipped roof to the rooms north of the west aisle.

East Elevation (Worcester Road)

The east elevation to Worcester Road has four sections from south to north: the vestry rooms in the south and a link attaching them to the central nave, a projection from the south end of the nave and east aisle, then the east elevation of the east aisle, and finally the tower in the north.

At the south end of the nave, the last bay of the eastern aisle extends eastward and is housed under a steep pitched roof at right angles to the main north-south aligned nave roof. This eastern projection has a large sexafoil window in the gable with two lancet windows below. Beneath these at lower ground floor level are two square-headed windows under gently curved relieving arches, with a buttress between them.

The east elevation of the east aisle is topped by a parapet of small round-headed arches which extends to the projection from the south end of the aisle. There are three large pointed arch windows lighting the aisle, each incorporating a quatrefoil over two lancet windows. The plain caps of four buttresses flank these three windows, with the buttresses continuing down to the floor below where they separate three wider, shallower arch-headed windows than those aligned centrally above them.

South Elevation

The south elevation shows the two-storey rear of the vestry rooms and ancillary rooms beneath. Above the vestry can be seen the three windows in the south gable end of the nave, and to the west of this, the unusual two-tiered gabled roof over the former organ space which projects to the south-west of the nave.

West Elevation

The west elevation faces the western part of Queen's Drive. The nave roof has three pitched dormer plate-tracery windows. Below the dormers the roof becomes a catslide to cover the aisle which has three pointed arch windows, as in the east elevation. The southern bay of the aisle projects out to form the space which housed the organ, and is covered by a pitched roof at right angles to the aisle roof. This bay is lit by two narrow arched windows with a sexafoil above them in the gable. South of this is the link to the vestry building and the west gable of the vestry.

North of the aisle another projection extends under a hipped roof; the west elevation of this is blank except for a row of three windows with trefoil tracery to their tops under a square head beneath the eaves. Further to the north-west is the west side of the pitched roof of the north porch, and the turret on the north-west corner.

Tower

The church has a tower at its north-east corner. The tower is square in plan with each corner buttressed, leaving a recessed central section to the four elevations. There is a circular plan turret engaged to the south-east corner of the tower. The buttresses taper upwards to elongated pyramid-shaped caps which clasp the octagonal spire. Level with the eaves of the nave roof, each tower elevation has an elongated arched opening in a frame of concentric arches under an ogee hood mould. Above these openings, starting level with the caps of the buttresses and in line with the four elevations, are four narrow lucarnes under steep gablets on alternating faces of the octagonal spire.

The north tower elevation has a central double door in a moulded arched frame under a hood mould, with another stone arch set into the surrounding stonework immediately above that. Over the door is a shallow, steep-gabled porch roof which comes out on kneelers to span the width of the tower.

The east elevation of the tower has a single door at the base, which is at lower ground level, below that of the door in the north elevation. This east door is in a concentric arch frame with a stone arch surround built into the wall. Above this, buttresses begin at the corners, enclosing a horizontal window divided by chamfered mullions into six square lights. A rectangular recess with a square window is immediately over the south end of the square windows, and above that is a drip mould above which is a long narrow slit opening.

Vestry and Ancillary Rooms

The vestry room block is two storeys under a pitched roof with east and west facing gable ends with stone coping to the verges. To the east elevation, each storey has a stone-mullioned triple casement window in alignment with each other. The first-floor windows differ from those below in being taller, incorporating a stone transom and arched heads, with a round relieving arch in the stonework above.

The link to the nave on the east side houses a staircase with a doorway and side window at ground floor level, and three square windows below the eaves of the awkwardly shaped slope to the small link roof. To the south elevation, a window of four lights separated by wide double chamfered mullions with four-centred arch heads is under the eaves. East of this is a stone chimney which is located off-centre to the east. A single doorway with a brick surround is at ground level, with a small square window on the west side of the chimney breast.

The west elevation has a link to the south bay of the aisle which has a single doorway; this connects to the gable end of the vestry which has a pair of lancet windows in a square frame under a rounded relieving arch, with a small square window south of this.

Interior

The nave is wide and four bays long, with bays delineated by the trusses of the arch-braced roof. A 20th-century partition seals off the northern end of the nave to form a narthex. The central three bays are lit by the large windows to the aisles and the southernmost bays by the double windows in the right-angle projections from the nave. The aisles are separated from the nave by arches supported by relatively slender hexagonal stone columns which have high bases and capitals with a triple abacus.

At the south end of the nave is a raised stage for an altar which was used by the United Reformed Church. The south wall incorporates a reredos of two panels displaying the Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus. Each panel is set within a recessed pointed arch; these arches are divided by a pair of columns with carved foliate capitals and are themselves set within a larger arch recessed deeper into the wall. Over the panels, finely detailed corbels support an arched hood mould over the large central window which continues in smaller flanking arches over the side doors to the vestry rooms behind the south wall of the nave.

The school room on the floor below the nave has a 20th-century stage inserted to its southern end and is divided into a narrower and wider section by three large brick piers. A door from the south end opens to a kitchen to the east. Some of the ancillary rooms have been subdivided to provide additional toilets. The lowest floor is mainly void except for some small storage and more toilet rooms, and stairway access to upper floors. Stairs are timber with closed strings, turned balusters, plain rounded handrails and ball finial newel posts.

Subsidiary Features

The boundary to Queen's Drive in the west is a rubble stone wall with irregular rubble capping stones. A florally decorated single iron gate which opens onto Queen's Drive in the east, south-east of the tower, enables entry to the path surrounding the church. North of the church on the eastern side of Queen's Drive are other rubble stone walls, steps and gates allowing access to the different levels of the church, with the iron gate facing east to Queen's Drive featuring the sunflower motif.

A tall, rock-faced stone balcony provides access to the door in the north face of the tower. The top of this balcony has square stone openings separated by chamfered mullions immediately below a stone rail.