Cotham Church

Cotham Church

A Congregational chapel, now an Anglican church, located on Cotham Road in Bristol. Built in 1842–3 and designed by William Butterfield, this was his first architectural commission, obtained through his family connection with WD Wills the tobacco industrialist. The apse, tower, south transept and school were added in 1863 by EW Godwin; the apse was moved out one bay around 1890. The church was originally built as Highbury Congregational Chapel and was purchased by the Church of England circa 1975.

The building is constructed of Pennant rubble with limestone ashlar dressings and a tiled roof. It is designed in the Perpendicular Gothic Revival style and comprises an aisled nave, north porch, south transept, apse and tower. The church is linked to the school by a five-bay passage with two-light trefoil-headed windows, the second from the east forming a tall entrance with an iron gate; the single-storey school rooms have two- and three-light square-headed windows.

The north aisle has four bays with wide four-centred arched windows of four lights and panel tracery, separated by buttresses with a deep roll moulding to the plinth. The clerestory has triple quatrefoils, unaligned with the aisle windows. The west porch features an arched doorway with hollow moulding, diagonal buttresses and a coped parapet.

The south transept has a gable to the transept gallery stairs and a parapeted wall to the school rooms, with one-, two- and three-light trefoil-headed windows with flat lintels. The stair block has diagonal buttresses with chamfered corners above them, two-light Perpendicular windows to the south and west, and a west door reached by a flight of steps.

The three-stage tower stands in the angle between the transept and the aisle. It features an octagonal ashlar southwest turret which rises above the tower to a crenellated top. Butterfield's reset aisle window is incorporated into the ground stage to the west; above it is a three-light flat-headed window, an arrow slit to the second stage, and paired single lights with Perpendicular panel tracery and ashlar bands to the belfry. A drip course with gargoyles and a crenellated parapet tops the tower. The west end has a four-light window above a central door, a two-light window to the north aisle, and a stair tower for the west gallery with a parapet to the south.

The apsidal east end has two-light windows. The northeast vestry gable contains a marble wall memorial within an ogee panel commemorating the five Bristol martyrs.

Internally, the apse contains a panelled timber reredos with stilted arches on hexagonal corbel responds to the sides, and an arch-braced vault. The nave arcade has hexagonal piers to four-centred arches and responds. Splayed clerestory windows with shoulders and an arch-braced collar-beam roof span the nave. The south transept extends two bays and connects to the tower via a door with a ramped stone stair featuring a smooth soffit and foliate wrought-iron balustrade. Galleries date to 1863 at the west end and transept, with pierced quatrefoils and billet mould, and similar wainscotting.

A wall monument to Arnold Thomas was carved by Eric Gill in 1924, depicting a shepherd and sheep, and is located on the northeast nave respond.

This is an exceptionally early and unusual example of the application of the Gothic Revival style to nonconformist chapel architecture, and represents significant work by two major nineteenth-century architects.