Former Sunday school, lecture hall and vestry block to Union Chapel

Former Sunday School, Lecture Hall and Vestry Block to Union Chapel

These three ancillary buildings are constructed against the east end of Union Chapel, facing Compton Avenue. They are built of London stock brick with red brick and stone dressings, and have tiled roofs.

Access from the chapel is via a doorway to the right of the pulpit, which opens into a circulation corridor that has been widened and extended. The three buildings are arranged with the Sunday school in the centre, the lecture hall to the north, and the vestry meeting room to the south.

The Sunday school is laid out on an 'Akron' plan, based on the Methodist Episcopal Church school at Akron, Ohio, and reflecting the educational ideas of the US educationalist Walter Blythe. The main hall is surrounded on three sides by a gallery containing a series of open-fronted booths, allowing several classes to be supervised by a single teacher. The lecture hall to the north is positioned at first-floor level, with further rooms below. To the south, the vestry meeting room is accompanied by an adjoining stair leading to the caretaker's flat above.

The buildings display a free domestic idiom similar to that used by the London School Board, characterised by large multi-pane sash windows with flat-arched heads, complex rooflines dominated by steep gables and dormers, and extensive use of stepped and layered brickwork. The vestry block is a three-storey building resembling a tower-house, with a steep-pitched roof and end stacks. A single-storey east wing with a hipped roof contains the committee room. The Sunday school is a double-height block with a gabled roof set parallel to Compton Avenue and a pointed-arch entrance doorway to the left. Three slightly projecting bays with paired windows rise into gabled dormers; between them at eaves level runs a tiled frieze reading 'Union Chapel Sunday School'. The lecture hall is the tallest of the three buildings. Its broad gable end faces the street and contains three tiers of windows, the lower tier segmental-headed with iron grilles, and the upper two shoulder-arched and set within shallow segmental recesses. The roof-ridge is crowned by a small lead cupola, and the north wall has shoulder-arched windows set between massive stepped buttresses.

All three buildings have well-preserved interiors. The vestry and committee rooms both contain fireplaces with moulded stone surrounds, decorative tilework and cast-iron grates with Japanese motifs. The committee room also contains a large built-in safe and, mounted on the adjoining wall, a folding board showing a plan of the chapel with moveable pins to indicate pew ownership. The windows contain etched glass, much degraded in the committee room but recently renewed in the vestry. An open-well staircase with decorative metal balustrades leads to the caretaker's flat, which has a number of fireplaces with plain stone surrounds.

The Sunday school is a single rectangular space with stairs leading up to a three-sided gallery supported on cast-iron posts; the gallery has a decorative wrought-iron front, and the booths behind retain their original numbered plaques and, in some cases, their folding timber side and front panels. The lecture hall is a large double-height space with an arch-braced roof of four bays. The lower walls have matchboard dados, and at one end is a fireplace with a stone hood and a shouldered tilework surround. A bar has been formed in one corner using timber salvaged from pews. Below are two smaller halls separated by a corridor.