Castle Street Methodist Church And Sunday School Including Front Gates And Railings

CAMBRIDGE

667/0/10149 CASTLE STREET 01-MAY-03 (West side) Castle Street Methodist Church and Sun day School including front gates and r ailings

GV II

Church and Sunday School. 1914. By A.F.Scott and Son of Norwich. Red brick with stone-coloured faience dressings and coped slate roofs. Tudor Perpendicular style with Tudor-arched windows with hood moulds and foliage stops and some with tracery. Angle buttresses to front. Nave with gable facing with tower to right and 'east end' organ chamber. Narrow yard to left side then Sunday School which also has gable facing, is two storeys to rear and which is joined to the church at rear by a linking range, also two storeys. EXTERIOR. Church has slightly projecting frontespiece porch and double-leafed door. Single-light window to either side and a 5-light window over. Low projecting element to left and tower to right. This is 2-stage with single-light window to front and right side and larger windows over. Parapet with pierced balustrade. Nave sides have 3-light windows. Organ chamber has 2-light window to side. Rear facade facing St.Peter's St. has 2 windows to organ chamber ground floor, 2 single-light windows to link range on both floors and 3 windows on both floors to the rear of the Sunday School. All these are similar to main windows and have hood moulds and foliage stops and some have tracery. Sunday School front to Castle St. has double-leafed part-glazed door, 3-light window over and a 2-light to either side, all with tracery. Each side has three gabled dormers with 3-light windows. In the narrow yard between church and school a further arched entrance in single-storey flat-roofed corridor which backs onto the two-storey linking range. There are cast-iron gates and railings across the front of both buildings. INTERIOR of church. Hammer-beam roof boarded to sides and above at collar level. Very complete fittings include west gallery with front decorated with cusped arcading and a set of pews with cusping to carved ends. Wide east end arch has moulded and carved reading desk and communion rail beneath, with organ chamber behind. Across the arch is a choir gallery which has an arcaded front decorated with cusping and which is backed by the front of the organ. This Methodist Church and Sunday School is a finely and richly detailed ensemble which has been carefully designed to be seen from all views and which also takes advantage of the sloping site on the Castle St. front. It forms a group with other nearby listed buildings.