Maiden Street Methodist Church

Maiden Street Methodist Church

A Methodist church built between 1866 and 1870, designed by architects Foster and Wood. The building underwent alterations in 1955 following a bequest by John B Cole. It is constructed of Flemish bond brickwork with a Portland ashlar front, squared dressed Portland stone and brickwork to the sides and rear, and slate roofs.

The church is designed in the Lombardic Romanesque style and makes a striking visual statement, with its contrasting red brick and white stone, vigorous form, and ornate detailing. The building is notable as a lofty structure that terminates St Edmund Street on its axis.

The plan comprises a high nave with galleries on three sides, lower aisles, a shallow chancel, a two-storey external narthex with stairs leading to an entrance lobby, and an undercroft beneath.

The front elevation is intricately detailed. A high gable sits on Lombard bands in stone beneath an enriched cornice and cresting with a central finial. This gable contains an eight-light wheel window set in a deep moulded round arch, positioned above a deep stone apron and flanked by small arched openings in stone dressings. Below this is a four-bay arcade on paired Romanesque columns supporting stilted arches, mounted on pedestals with a pierced balustrade between them. Beneath the arcade is a doorway with paired glazed doors featuring a segmental top and lintel, flanked by wide openings with moulded arches. The right opening gives access to a staircase, while the left opening is partially blocked with masonry to plinth height. The front is finished with various bandings and mouldings, a plinth in rock-faced masonry, and flat piers flanking the central section. Stone steps rise from the right-hand opening to a central narthex landing, with a further straight flight rising from the left return.

The right flank has a blind clerestorey with dentilled eaves above aisle walls in coursed and squared stone with brick dressings. At the top level are sixteen plain flush arched lights, arranged mainly in triplets but paired at the end bays, above six arched lights set to a flush sill band with brick arches and jambs. The ground floor, partly concealed by extensions, contains various lights with segmental heads.

The left flank, facing Mitchell Street, follows similar proportions but with richer detailing. The top lights are set within roll-mould arches with intermediate columns, positioned to a deep sill and dentil band, above lights with a flush sill band. At the lowest level are six two-light openings with decorative stone tympana set back beneath segmental flush heads, resting on a heavy roll-mould above the plinth. An arched opening at the right-hand end provides access to the narthex steps. The east wall features a plate tracery wheel window in squared rubble with brick dressings, and there are two metal ventilators to the ridge.

The interior nave spans four and a half bays and contains dark stained arch-braced trusses with one purlin and arch-braced supports to a deep purlin beam spanning over the arcades. The aisle roofs have cross-bracing to all panels, with close-boarded finish. Arch braces to the aisles are carried on posts rising from corbels in the plastered walls. The arcade piers are slender cast-iron shafts with Ionic capitals at gallery level and Corinthian capitals to the arcade level.

At the east end, the sanctuary area, which formerly also had a gallery, has been modified with side partitions introduced to frame the recess, which has a segmental compartmental ceiling. Aisle windows are simple square embrasures containing triple lights. The gallery fronts have three horizontal moulded and fielded panels to each bay, with cornice detailing, carried on a moulded beam with canted sides to the west. A lobby has been inserted at the west end, with its partition positioned just behind the gallery columns, and wooden stairs to the galleries are provided on each side. The floors are wooden with plain pews and a match-boarded dado.

The east window has responds and a deep sill above a moulded cornice, with a curtain hanging behind the altar. A stair behind the altar provides access to the extensive undercroft. The undercroft is plainly finished with various cast-iron column supports to a flat ceiling. The organ is free-standing in the west gallery, opening onto the space above the narthex through a wide plain arched opening. To its right stands a bold quadrant pulpit with blind arcading, flanked by a similar reading desk.

The church appears to have undergone very few alterations to its fabric beyond the 1955 modifications to the sanctuary area and the insertion of the western lobby.