Elim Pentecostal Church

Elim Pentecostal Church

Church built in 1854 to designs by architects H.E. and A.S. Goodridge. Constructed in limestone ashlar with leaded and Welsh slate roofs. Listed Grade II*.

The church is ingeniously planned on a tapering site. The outwardly centrally planned chapel comprises a tapering worship space that narrows towards the pulpit, with a vestry behind. A screen front faces the street, with a centrally planned decagonal church within.

The building is designed in Lombardic Romanesque style. The two-storey façade and secondary elevations feature a screen front with a central gabled section flanked by short wings ending in towers that rise to an additional storey. The ground floor has a blind Romanesque arcade of five bays set on a plinth incorporating five wrought-iron lattice-work vents, flanked by additional bays and Lombardic porches projecting forward below gables at each end of the façade.

The upper storey contains a large central arched recess flanked by columns in-antis with rope orders, framing a rose window of twelve lights with inscriptions reading 'PERCY CHAPEL' and the date 'MDCCCLIV' (1854). Strip pilasters articulate the upper storey, with a corbel table at eaves level. Single round-headed windows over each porch light stairs to the galleries.

The towers have moulded stringcourses at sill and springing level for windows, with paired windows set within arched recesses infilled with delicate masonry openwork divided by colonettes with composite capitals. The towers finish with heavy projecting cornices and pyramidal slate roofs. Behind the central gable rises a decagonal drum over the interior space, forming the clerestory. Each face of the drum has a four-light arcaded window with a corbel table and deep eaves overhang, all beneath a pyramidal slate roof. Hidden flat roofs linking the façades and clerestory drum are covered in lead. The rear elevation, barely visible, is limestone ashlar with a rose window lighting the gallery to the south and a large ashlar masonry stack venting the boiler.

The interior forms a polygonal space at ground floor with a gallery above, surmounted by the decagonal clerestory carried on ten slender Purbeck marble columns with delicate composite capitals. These are linked with semicircular arches decorated with basket-work carving to the soffits. Spandrels above retain decorative paintwork, as do walls above the timber dado panelling. The gallery floor is raked, though some pews have been removed. The mid-19th century roof structure survives complete. Two sets of stairs in the towers, constructed in masonry with wrought-iron balustrades, provide access to the gallery.

The gallery is carried on ten iron columns supporting massive beams on which rest shaped and cantilevered timber joists. The gallery rail features a cornice with dentils and a pediment over a clock set in the eastern face, positioned opposite the raised integral pulpit to serve both ground floor and gallery worshippers.

A substantial basement takes advantage of the sloping topography, its floor carried on a system of iron and stone columns and vaults. Originally installed here was the boiler and an early air handling system designed and installed by Hadens of Trowbridge. The boiler has since been removed, though the ancillary system has been ingeniously modified for modern environmental management. A 20th-century suspended ceiling previously set on the top of the gallery rail was removed in 2018.

The building was originally known as the Percy Chapel, founded in 1854 by Congregationalist secessionists from Argyle Chapel, Bath, following the appointment of Reverend W.H. Dyer as successor to the retiring Reverend Jay, who took considerable numbers of affluent congregation members with him. The chapel was built on the then-western fringes of the city. The name derived from Jay's residence in Percy Place. The first pastor was Reverend Richard Brindley, and the chapel opened on 13th December 1854 with a capacity of 1000. A prominent cupola-topped ventilator formerly on the roof was removed after 1945.

The present congregation, the Elim Pentecostal Church, was founded in Monaghan, Ireland in 1915 and has occupied this building since 1955.