Wesley Methodist Church, And Attached Schoolroom, Vestry And Iron Railings

The Wesley Methodist Church, together with its attached schoolroom, vestry, and iron railings, was built in 1870 on the site of earlier chapels dating from 1812 and 1862. The design is by James Hine and Alfred Norman of Plymouth, with construction by Blatchfords of Tavistock and carving by Harry Hems of Exeter. The building is polychrome stone with Bathstone, Portland stone, and granite dressings, featuring a steeply pitched main roof, medium-pitch lean-to aisle roofs, all covered with dry Delabole slate and coped ends. A tower spire was removed in the early 1980s.

The church is of Early Gothic style, displaying a symmetrical road front with a ritual west end and a buttressed tower on the right, linked by a courtyard doorway. The west front has a tall central gable with flanking buttresses, and a large four-light pointed window with an octofoil rose featuring two pointed arches enclosing quatrefoils over trefoil-headed lights. Below is a triple entrance loggia with pointed arches and sexfoil tympanae supported on polished granite shafted piers with freestone abutments, adorned with carved classically-inspired caps and imposts. Aisle windows are two-light traceried, with buttresses featuring crocketted pinnacles. All windows have leaded glazing, and there are two-light clerestory windows to the sides. The three-bay front of the schoolroom on the left incorporates a stepped three-light window with round arches and a sill storey (reused from the 1862 chapel), projecting in a central gabled bay. Side bays feature round-headed windows with squat nook shafts.

Inside the chapel, the roof is arch-braced, and the aisle arcades have pointed arches. The clerestory windows have mullion shafts. The chancel includes painted wall panels by Harris of Plymouth. Fittings include numbered pitch-pine pews, a north (ritual west) gallery with a quatrefoil frieze, a hexagonal-on-plan Bath stone pulpit and round font, a bookstand and communion rail by Hart Peard, and a desk in the vestry by Whipple of Exeter, originally from a schoolroom on Castle Street.

The forecourt features low rubble walls with chamfered granite copings, surmounted by iron railings with twist stanchions, central balls, and fleur-de-lis finials. A central gateway has square piers and paired arched iron gates with a low frieze of roundels.