Hay Hill Baptist Church

FOUNTAIN BUILDINGS Hay Hill Baptist Church (Formerly Listed as: HAY HILL Hay Hill Baptist Church) 05/08/75

GV II

Baptist church. 1869-1870 with C20 alterations. By Wilson and Willcox. MATERIALS: Square rock faced limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, Welsh slate roof. PLAN: Nave, aisles, chancel, with gallery at east (entrance) end. EXTERIOR: Built on site with street front at angle to body of church, with only street facade externally expressed. 3-bays fronting nave and aisles. Early Pointed Gothic style. Plinth, paired plank doors in large central entrance arch. Paired colonnettes with stiff leaf caps frame doors which have arch heads. Five sunk quatrefoils in tympanum above. Flanking windows are three-light, also with arched heads, and triple quatrefoils above, below elliptically arched drip. Centre bay set slightly forward and flanked by strip buttresses with ashlar quoins. Ashlar sill and impost bands. Side bays have windows at gallery level, two-light pointed arch with trefoil heads and quatrefoil above, drip over. Large central Decorated window, larger version of side ones with two taller paired windows supporting quatrefoil drip over. Buttresses are topped with two stage pinnacles, lower one square, upper one eight sided, conical roofs. Side bays have lean-to roofs behind parapet pierced by quatrefoils. Plain roof, rest of exterior not seen. INTERIOR: Four and a half bay nave and two-bay chancel. Arcade of plain shafts and cushion caps with sharply pointed arches. Clerestory with triple light windows, close-set scissor brace roof. Gallery with pierced pine front across east end, infilled below c1980, now a meeting room. Segmental chancel arch with rose window with central octofoil and outer circle of quatrefoils. Chancel arcade a smaller version of the nave. HISTORY: This Baptist chapel was built on the site of St Werburgh¿s Church, also known as the Sanctuary Chapel. The steep site presented a challenge to the architects: a large schoolroom was built beneath the chapel as a solution. It has similarities in design to Manvers Street Baptist Church (qv). SOURCES: [R.E.M. Peach, `Bath Old and New' (1891), 296].

Listing NGR: ST7500265271