Former Salvation Army Citadel

Former Salvation Army Citadel, Durngate Street

This is a former chapel built in 1875 with additions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including a probable Sunday School constructed in a matching style. The building stands on a corner plot on Durngate Street, at the centre of Dorchester.

The structure is constructed of brown brick with ashlar dressings, beneath pitched slate roofs. It is roughly square in plan, with the original chapel forming the main element, a two-storey wing with basement containing ancillary rooms to the rear, and an attached west range that probably served as a Sunday School.

The principal entrance front faces north and features two gables. The left-hand gable is buttressed with four buttresses, the outer two rising to pinnacles. The entrance comprises a pointed-arched door with flanking colonettes carrying crocket capitals and a single roll moulding. Above this are cusped single lancets with Early English tracery and a spherical triangle in the gable end. The right-hand gable, belonging to the former Sunday School, contains similar windows positioned adjacent to each other, separated by very slender buttresses that rise from an entrance porch. This porch has diagonal buttresses and a matching pointed-arched door. The east elevation to Salisbury Street is more modest, with bays defined by buttresses containing simple square-headed windows with ashlar surrounds and brick relieving arches. The right-hand window dates from the second half of the 20th century; the others are boarded over. The rear addition contains a large four-light window with cusped heads.

The interior was not inspected as of 2010 but is understood to comprise two single-storey halls with arch-braced roof trusses carried on corbels within the former chapel. Windows from what was previously the external west wall of the chapel remain visible, though their openings have been blocked, likely when the building was extended westwards.

The building was originally constructed as a Primitive Methodist Chapel. It was extended prior to 1902 when service rooms were added to the rear, and again between 1902 and 1929 when a hall, possibly a Sunday School, was constructed on the west side. The building continued in use as a Methodist Chapel until the mid-20th century, after which it was used by the Salvation Army.