Perranwell Station Methodist Church including boundary walls

Perranwell Station Methodist Church including boundary walls

Methodist chapel with boundary walls, built in 1878 to designs by James Hicks of Redruth. The building is constructed from killas rubble with dressed elvan, granite and Bath stone, with walls brought to course at the entrance front. The roofs are steep Delabole dry slate with gable ends; the vestry roof has a lower pitch and a brick chimney at the rear south-east gable end.

The chapel has a large rectangular aisless plan with a stair and entrance hall at the north-west end, flanked by stair turrets that project slightly from the side walls. The chapel rises over a schoolroom and is lit by a gallery to three sides, with an organ bay over the vestry at the south-east end. The design is in the Gothic style.

The entrance front is a symmetrical north-west facing three-bay gable over a plinth. The bays are divided by buttresses surmounted by spirelets: square weathered ones flanking the central bay and octagonal ones at the corners. The central bay has a shouldered doorway with original doors now reset to the inner face of the wall, above which is a blind traceried tympanum. All is contained within a pointed arched gabled outer porch doorway with fluted square jambs with moulded capitals surmounted by pinnacles. Flanking the porch are single-light trefoil-headed windows. Above the porch are four shouldered arched windows, and three tall pointed arched windows rising into the gable; the central window is taller and wider with three lights instead of one, with a moulded pier and impost capitals, hoodmoulds and relieving arches. A gable ventilator is set above.

The left and right-hand stair well bays each have a blind arch over the plinth framing an inscription, a tall two-light pointed mid-floor stair window with double transom, roundel, hoodmould and relieving arch, and a blind trefoil-headed arcade band above. The side walls are identical except for the organ and vestry bay, which is lit to the south-west stair turret side and blind to the opposite side.

Each side wall has a stair projection at the north-west side and four bays of two-light windows: square-headed to the basement with double transoms, and with pointed arches and roundels to the first floor. Each stair turret has a chamfered doorway with original door within an outer pointed arch framing a blind tympanum with roundel, a hoodmould to the doorway, and a lancet above. The windows have original leaded glass to the entrance front and stairs, otherwise iron casements.

The interior remains virtually as built except for alterations made around 1904 for the insertion of a central stair within the entrance, designed by Mr Collins, an architect of Redruth, and carried out by Mr W.H. Moyle. The gallery at the north-west end is semi-circular on plan with a panelled front, carried on cast iron columns. The organ, fitted around 1900, is housed in a room behind the rostrum and linked to the main building by a pointed moulded chancel arch with hoodmould and an inner order carried on short columns.

The main T-stair from 1904 features turned balusters. Two flights flank the main stair, and one flight provides access to the vestry. The roof structure is a dominant feature, with mock hammer beams with square section iron ties and crown hangers with mouldings to obscure the joints. The rostrum has a lecturn over a blind arcade with turned balustrades to either side terminating in pedestals surmounted by candelabra, flanked by two flights of steps, and with a communion rail balustrade to the front. The pews are pitch pine with panelled backs, shaped ends and intermediate ramped armrests. Granite coped rubble walling encloses the entrance, with main gate-piers having moulded caps and iron gates.

Walter Visick, Assistant Secretary of Visick's Foundry nearby, was one of the original trustees in 1878, and it is very likely that the ironwork of the chapel was manufactured there. This building was constructed in 1878 for a relatively small community and is remarkably ambitious in design and scale. It remains virtually complete despite small fires in 1922 and 1976 which threatened its destruction but were extinguished in time.