High Town Methodist Church is a Grade II listed building in the Luton local planning authority area, England. First listed on 20 February 1981. Church. 1 related planning application.
High Town Methodist Church
- WRENN ID
- sacred-facade-twilight
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Luton
- Constituency
- Luton South and South Bedfordshire MP: Rachel Hopkins (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 20 February 1981
- Type
- Church
- Address
- High Town Methodist Church, High Town Road, LU2 0BW
- OS grid reference
- TL 093 218
- Coordinates
- 51.88445, -0.41256
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
High Town Methodist Church, dated 1897, is designed in a simple neo-classical style with Byzantine influences, featuring a large Baroque cupola on the left-hand bay. The church is constructed of Luton grey bricks with red brick and stone dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof that has crested ridge tiles. It consists of two storeys and attics, presenting a three-bay facade. The wide central bay is topped by a triangular pediment with three small arched louvred windows.
On the first floor, there is a large arched window with a small keystone and geometric glazing bars in the arch, and a stone cill band runs across all three bays. The ground floor features double arched doorways with stone keystones, divided by double pilasters. The smaller side bays have brick parapets with stone and moulded brick cornice bands, and each has full-height brick pilasters decorated near the top with moulded brick pediments over arched niches, also with stone cill bands.
Between the pilasters on the first floor, there are semi-circular arched windows with paired round-headed lights and a roundel above. The cill band continues around the pilasters. The ground floor has a brick moulded band above two-light casements in stone surrounds. The left-hand bay includes an extra half storey with a stone version of the pediment motif found on the first-floor pilasters, and a circular window between the pilasters. Above them, small stone octagonal domes in the Byzantine style flank the stone cupola, which features three arched louvred openings on each side, corner pilasters, an eaves cornice, a ribbed leaded roof, and is surmounted by a small octagonal leaded turret with a weathervane.
The south side of the church has a semi-apsidal east end and an attached turret. The nine-bay elevation features brick eaves, with each bay in a shallow recess containing one window per floor. The upper windows are round-headed with red brick arches, paired round-headed lights, and a roundel above, while the lower windows have segmental heads with keystones in red brick.
Local climate
High Town Methodist Church sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 730 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 80% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 77% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 37 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 70% of listed buildings. Of these, 18 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 1 transaction since 1999
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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