Baptist Chapel And Attached Schoolroom Including Forecourt Wall

This Baptist chapel, schoolroom, and forecourt wall were built in 1887 by John Wills, funded by the Congreve family. The building is in a transitional Gothic style and is constructed of coursed Purbeck rubble with freestone dressings, topped with a slate roof and crested ridge tiles. The chapel and schoolroom form a continuous range along the street. To the left, a screen wall separates the chapel from a house (not included in the listing) and features a Caernarvon-arched doorway within a pentised porch. The porch has a quatrefoil window above, with a pilaster buttress rising to a heavy broached pinnacle. The main chapel section runs parallel to the street and includes a transept with two tiers of triple lancet windows (two lights each, flanked by a single light), four bays of double lancet windows in two tiers beneath gables, and buttresses between the bays. The main entrance is a two-centred arched doorway with polished Purbeck shafts, situated within the ground storey of a forward-projecting, buttressed tower. The tower has four stages, false battlements, machicolations, and a Rhenish-style pyramidal roof. A further screen with a doorway connects to the schoolroom, which has a gable-end to the street with triple lancet windows. The chapel’s interior is open to a hammerbeam roof with collars pierced with trefoils. Galleries are present on three sides, supported by cast-iron columns with foliated capitals. Original pitch pine pews and desks remain, along with fine wrought-iron screens to the galleries and other fixtures.