Buckingham Baptist Chapel

Buckingham Baptist Chapel, built in 1842, was designed by RS Pope. It is a Grade II* listed building of significant architectural interest. The chapel is constructed of limestone ashlar, with the roof largely obscured. It exhibits a French Gothic Revival style incorporating Decorated Gothic Revival details. It comprises an apsidal nave and a southeast chapel.

The three-bay apse beneath the nave gable features a central three-light window topped with a gable hood, rising above a weathered course and parallel pointed parapet. The chapel has a segmental-arched door within a pointed arch and steep gabled hood. The nave gable contains a rose window of six trefoils below a weathered band and parapet, and a similar door on the north side.

The north elevation has five bays, each with a three-light Geometrical window within a gable hood, and a blind, traceried tympanum. Buttresses have weathered tops and diagonally-set pinnacles, with a weathered band and an open parapet of cusped triangles. The south elevation mirrors the north. The west gable has octagonal corner turrets on square plinths, with slender shafts rising to a band of quatrefoil panels. Above a course of weathering is a spirelet faced with blind gableted panels. The main front displays three arches in gable hoods, the taller central one being of two orders with a hood almost twice the height of the flanking pair. Within the central arch are doorways with deeply cusped trefoil arches to a trumeau, featuring a quatrefoil on the tympanum and blind tracery inside the hood. The doors have elaborate strap hinges. An arcade of ten trefoil-headed niches in gable hoods flanks the central arch, beneath a shallow arcade with trefoil-headed panels that lead to a rose window. A weathered band rises above the rose, parallel to the steeply pitched gable, which has an arcade of raised trefoils to the parapet. Slender pinnacles are located on the sides and top of the gable.

The interior features arched, moulded lateral braces to a ceiling, divided by moulded beams with large bosses. There is a west gallery with stone steps leading up from the lobby, and a blocked two-centre chancel arch. The chapel is noted for its striking design, contrasting with the classical style of the surrounding villas and terraces. It is considered unusually important as an early and scholarly exercise in Gothic Revivalist style for a Baptist church.