Breachwood Green Baptist Church

The Breachwood Green Baptist Church is a building of group value, dating to 1904 and designed by Geo Baines & Son of London, with Mallett & Wood builders of Luton responsible for the construction. It is built of red brick, banded with white brick, and features cream terracotta traceried windows, caps to piers, and moulded copings. A plainer, two-storey red brick building of 1897 adjoins the east side, incorporating engraved memorial plaques relating to its construction.

The church is a tall, two-storey structure in a free Arts and Crafts Perpendicular style, consisting of a shallow west front, a four-window-wide, narrower nave, and a lower, one-window-wide east section. The west front is gabled, with a very large seven-light window featuring an ogee traceried head set within a moulded segmental arch, capped with drip stones and leaf stops. Twin double doors are positioned below, set within splayed brick jambs and featuring a segmental traceried head with a moulded drip carried up to a shield-shaped finial and leaf stops. The doors themselves are half-glazed and panelled. Bold, tapering buttresses flank the front, incorporating lower, hipped-roofed square stair turrets on each side. These buttresses have panelled heads, wide overhanging bracketed cornices, swept pointed lead caps, and tall wrought iron finials, each supporting a circle with tendril brackets. A moulded terracotta crochet finial sits atop the gable. The roofs of the stair turrets and the body of the church have a deep overhang with moulded rafter ends, painted white and projecting beyond the gutter. Stained glass is present in the west window and fanlights. The nave windows are terracotta-framed, with three-light cinquefoil heads to the first floor and three-light windows with cinquefoil heads and ogee tracery under segmental heads to the ground floor.

The interior is galleried on three sides, with a choir gallery at the east, housing an organ within a pointed arched recess supported by bold foliate corbels. A central pulpit is present, with a railed foredeck featuring tapering posts with wide, moulded square caps, and ironwork tendril balusters with beaten copper hearts. The gallery posts are similarly tapered with bold square caps and arcaded panelling below the rail. Five arched trusses incorporate tie rods. The windows are filled with Art Nouveau stained glass set in cathedral glass fields. Pew ends feature heart shapes. A square, 17th-century oak door, with a moulded plank front, shelf, horizontal plank detailing, a seat-shelf within, and a moulded square knob finial, is located on the preacher’s left; it was formerly used at Coleman's Green, where the church was originally founded and has butterfly hinges. Stained glass panels are found in the doors, alongside copper push plates with repoussé hearts.