Formerly St Pauls Presbyterian Church, Now Part Of Herbert Brown Lenox Limited Industrial Premises

This is a former Presbyterian church, built in 1859 by T.E. Knightly and now forming part of Herbert Brown Lenox Limited industrial premises. The building is constructed of brown Flemish bond brick with stone and polychromatic brick dressings, and has a gabled slate roof. It follows a one-cell plan, with a square sanctuary at the east end, and is designed in a North Italian Romanesque style.

The west front is gabled and divided into three stages. The central doorway is flanked by engaged stone shafts with cushion capitals and has panelled double doors, above which is a carved stone tympanum and boarded cast-iron windows. A continuous arcade of nine semi-circular polychromatic brick arches, set on stone colonettes with cushion capitals and moulded bases, runs across the first storey. The upper stage of the gable is flanked by a similar arcade consisting of five arches. The north and south elevations have four bays, each containing semi-circular polychromatic brick arches over four-light cast-iron windows, with heavy stepped brick eaves courses. The clerestory, clad in fish-scale slates, contains three-light windows, each with a stone semi-circular arcade set on colonettes with cushion capitals and moulded bases; one window on the south side has been removed for a mid-20th century entry. A plain extension was added to the east end in 1905 at a right angle.

Inside, the sanctuary features a semi-circular arch set on stone colonettes with inverted volutes to the cushion capitals, and stone steps lead to a balcony with a panelled front supported by cast-iron columns. The roof is a four-bay structure with arch braces constructed from laminated timber, an early example of its use. A foundation stone, to the right of the west door, was laid by John Scott Prussel, a Scottish shipbuilder who worked at the nearby Napier yard on the Great Eastern and other ships. Tradition holds that the church was built to serve the needs of Scottish ironworkers brought in to work on the Great Eastern.