Union Chapel

Union Chapel

Union Chapel is a striking Gothic Revival chapel faced externally in Leicestershire red brick with Bath stone dressings and a roof of red clay tiles, re-laid in 2005–6. The interior is faced in Bressingham red brick with stone dressings, marble inlaid decoration and joinery of Colombian pine.

The building follows a complex, Byzantine-inspired cross-in-square plan with four transept-like arms opening into a central octagonal space. The longer western arm, which includes the tower, forms the entrance vestibule, with flanking stairways leading to the raked octagonal gallery. The eastern arm, behind the central pulpit, contains the organ chamber. To the rear is a complex of ancillary buildings comprising the former Sunday school, lecture hall and vestry block.

Union Chapel occupies a narrow plot at the centre of Compton Terrace, with late-Georgian houses flanking it closely on either side. The intricate plan is expressed externally in an extremely complex roofscape: the central space is covered by an octagonal roof with an open lead and timber cupola at the apex and buttresses at the angles; gabled roofs cover the transept projections to north, west and south, and the extruded corner sections between have hipped roofs. The style is a "modernised" Early English Gothic, with a multiplicity of broad stepped lancets and a big rose window in the eastern transept.

The most dramatic feature is the tower, projecting forward 170 feet from the line of the terrace. Completed in 1889, it rises through four main stages with clasping buttresses terminating in octagonal pinnacles. The upper section has a cruciform roof with four arcaded gables, crowned by an octagonal spire. Below is a belfry stage with large twin openings, though the intended bells and louvres were never installed; much stonework detail here was lost during repairs in the 1950s. A large clock bracket on a triple-shafted corbel projects above three stepped lancet windows lighting the rear gallery. The lower stage forms the chapel's principal entrance, a huge Gothic portal with a gable above set within a band of blind arcading. The portal has an elaborately moulded archivolt supported on triple ringed shafts with foliage capitals; the twin doorways have glazed triple-lancet tympana and an oval wheel window above, and contain part-glazed sliding doors of heavy panelled construction. Flanking the tower on either side are two-storey porches with slightly smaller portals of simpler design, with the wheel window replaced by triple lancets set in a vesica. A panel to the right of the main entrance records the chapel's foundation and rebuilding.

The interior is a single cruciform space with shallow transept arms, the cross enclosing an octagon formed by galleries running between great polygonal piers. Over the long spans to the cardinal directions, the galleries are carried on a triple arcade with granite columns, while single segmental arches bridge the shorter intermediate spans. The gallery-fronts bear a frieze of square panels filled with brightly-coloured marble revetments. The organ chamber, concealed behind a wrought-iron screen, takes the place of the gallery at the east end, with an open, round-arched arcade running in front of the rose window above. The corner sections between the transepts have complex arrangements of transverse arches. The main piers rise to capitals with carved foliage and human heads, supporting eight great Gothic arches with billet mouldings to the archivolts, those to the shorter spans reinforced by segmental relieving arches. The ceiling of the octagon has long arched braces and blind triple lancets converging on a richly-decorated central panel. The ceiling under the tower has a similar design of arcading surrounding a central panel.

The chapel contains a rich and almost complete set of late-nineteenth-century fittings. On the eastern side of the octagon is a mosaic-floored dais supporting a hexagonal stone pulpit carved by Thomas Earp, its open arcaded base supporting a superstructure of quatrefoil panels containing marble lozenges, with marble shafts at the corners rising from sculpted corbel heads. Immediately behind this is an elaborate polychromatic iron screen concealing the pipework of the organ, which is an unaltered Henry Willis instrument retaining its original hydraulic bellows pumps. In the rear wall to the right of the dais is an arched doorway giving access to the ancillary complex, its tympanum containing a fragment of Plymouth Rock with a plaque recording its donation by the Pilgrim Society of Massachusetts in 1883. A demountable table with an open arcaded front, made of Colombian pine, fits into a slot at the front of the dais. The pews are arranged in an arc centred on the pulpit, and have shaped ends with decorative roundels, some retaining their original umbrella-holders and drip-trays. Certain areas of pewing have been removed, for example beneath the west gallery, but the majority remains intact. Beneath the galleries, the lower walls have matchboard dado panelling with a strip of patterned tiles above, punctuated by ventilation ducts treated as octagonal half-columns. Panelled, part-glazed doors at the west end give access to the entrance lobby and gallery stairs, the latter having carved newel posts and decorative iron balustrades. Around the walls are placed a number of memorial plaques, including a large brass tablet to the left of the dais commemorating Henry Allon's ministry. Four 1880s wrought-iron gasoliers in Art Nouveau style hang inverted from the octagon roof.

The most notable piece of stained glass is the eastern rose window by Frederick Drake of Exeter, original to the building and containing eight figures of angel musicians. Most of the windows originally contained simple patterned glazing with a narrow border of lilies, some of which still survives. Above the south gallery are six lancet lights by Lavers and Westlake, installed in 1893 as a memorial to Henry Allon and showing scenes of preaching and ministry. In the north- and south-east corners are smaller figures of saints and angels by Powell of Whitefriars. The north transept windows were destroyed by wartime bombing and replaced in 1946 with glass by John Rankin: a scene with Ruth and Naomi above the gallery, and simple textual scrolls below.