United Reform Church Including Attached Sunday Schools, Railings To West Wing Of Church Building

The United Reform Church, built between 1866 and 1867, is a significant structure originally designed for the Congregational denomination, likely by the architects Kemp-Welch and Pinder. This sizeable church features a Gothic outline but incorporates elements of Romanesque and Cinquecento styles, constructed from buff brick with stone dressings.

A tall and slender steeple serves as a dominant feature in the town's skyline, positioned at the ritual north-west (actual south-west). The church has a round-arched doorway and a two-light Cinquecento window, followed by a group of three portholes. Above these, there is a recessed belfry stage with a triplet of round-arched windows beneath a clock, topped with a splayed pyramid spire made of patterned two-tone slates and finished with a weathervane finial.

The ritual west front includes a double arched entrance set within a low gabled porch, supported by pink stone colonnettes with foliage capitals and vermiculated keystones. Above the entrance is a four-light round-arched window featuring tracery with roundels, one of which is cusped. The gable is adorned with a Lombard frieze, while the two-storey side elevations display lower windows with shouldered flat-arched lights beneath segmental relieving arches and foliage tympanums, and upper windows that are two-light Cinquecento style under cross gables. The roof is also covered in patterned two-tone slates.

The Sunday Schools have a similar elevation and roof design to the church, and there is ornamental iron railing along the street boundary of the recessed west wing of the church. The United Reform Church, along with its attached Sunday Schools and graveyards on both sides of the street, forms a group with The Cottage and Nos 4 and 5.