United Reformed Church and Former Sunday School

United Reformed Church and Former Sunday School

A non-conformist chapel built in 1852 to designs by Robert Kerr, with a Sunday school added in 1863 and further classrooms in 1882 to designs by E Boardman.

The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with gault brick dressings and slate-clad pitched roofs.

The church faces west onto London Road North with a rectangular plan comprising the vestibule and auditorium. The former schoolroom, now used as a hall, faces east onto Old Nelson Street, with additional former classrooms positioned to the north.

The exterior is executed in an elaborate Italianate style with ornate dressings. The wide gabled façade of the auditorium features a moulded brick cornice and is set forward from the lower gabled bay of the vestibule. The vestibule is embellished with a rusticated ground floor, quoins, and a moulded modillion cornice. The central double-leaf panelled door is set within a deeply moulded semi-circular arch surround with a keystone, the outermost moulding of which continues either side to form a string course. The entrance is flanked by rounded lancets with keystones. The first floor is lit by five stepped lancets within projecting surrounds with prominent keystones, and the gable head is pierced by an oculus. The windows contain square leaded lights. To the left stands a three-stage square tower with rusticated quoins to the first two stages and a moulded modillion cornice to the upper two stages. The first stage is dominated by a projecting rusticated entrance bay with a deep brick cornice and a keyed semicircular arch doorway containing double-leaf panelled doors. The second stage is lit by a keyed lancet, whilst the most elaborate third stage has a stepped brick base and open paired lancets on each side with jambs in the form of square columns. The pyramid roof is surmounted by a stone finial. Adjacent is a squat circular staircase tower with a similar rusticated ground floor and doorway to the square tower. The circular first floor has a moulded modillion cornice and is lit by a series of lancets with an outer band of red coloured glass set within projecting moulded frames. The returns to the auditorium are divided into six bays by flat buttresses and lit by tall round-headed sashes with glazing bars, those on the south side having been replaced around 2013.

The tall single-storey former Sunday school facing onto Old Nelson Street is in the same Italianate style, with rusticated quoins and a moulded modillion cornice above which is a parapet with horizontal gault brick panels. The façade is defined by shallow square projections to each end surmounted by short square turrets which have a pair of blind lancets. The central bay, which projects slightly, contains the double-leaf panelled door set within a keyed semi-circular arch surround, flanked by paired lancets. To the right is a shorter single-storey extension added in 1882, which has rusticated quoins and a dentilled cornice, above which the plain parapet has been rebuilt. It is lit by a group of three round-headed sash windows with keyed surrounds and glazing bars. The right return is blind, followed by three bays with flush gault brick string courses at sill and lintel level, these containing a panelled door and two sash windows all under segmental brick arches.

The interior is accessed via a principal entrance opening into a lobby with a staircase to the gallery, which was added in the mid-twentieth century, and a door into the vestibule refurbished in the early twenty-first century. The principal area of interest is the double-height auditorium with a six-bay hammerbeam roof clad in diagonal match boarding on the slopes. A panelled gallery runs around three sides, supported by slender iron columns, and retains fitted benches, some with shaped ends. The tall round-arched recess on the east wall and flanking doors date to the post-fire restoration. Numerous memorial tablets are affixed to the walls. In the circular turret, a stone spiral staircase with slender iron balusters supporting a handrail provides access to the gallery via an original four-panel door.

Few original fixtures and fittings remain in the former school. The original school of 1863 now functions as a large hall with high ceiling. On the north wall are three sets of wide panelled double-leaf doors providing access to three former classrooms added in 1882, two of which have been converted into one larger room. The third room in the north-east corner retains sloping matchboard cladding at one end, indicating that it formerly had gallery seating.