Unitarian Church

Unitarian Church, Notte Street, Plymouth

A Unitarian church built in 1957-8 in neo-Georgian style, designed by Richard Fraser of the Louis de Soissons Partnership.

The church is constructed from limestone ashlar and rendered brick, with blue slate and copper roofs. A copper-clad spire sits atop a timber belfry. The interior features hardwood block flooring and light oak fittings throughout.

The building is square on plan with a slightly narrower narthex porch projecting to the south. An attached range to the north-west contains service rooms and a meeting hall.

The church is a high single-storey structure set on a slightly projecting moulded plinth. The corners are clad in limestone ashlar with channelled rustication, framing wide recessed rendered central panels. Each of these panels contains a single high window with a segmental head set in a slightly recessed surround. A narrow plat band of limestone links the window heads and rustication, running continuously around the building. The roof is hipped with overhanging eaves, and a tall slender central spire rises from the centre with a ball and point finial, mounted on an octagonal timber lantern.

The main south elevation features a portico porch with panelled hardwood double doors and panelled returns, reached by three steps. Above the porch pediment is a segmental-headed timber window with curved glazing bars to its top. The east and west timber windows are similar, each of multiple panes with curved sections to their tops. A plaque reading "UNITARIAN CHAPEL 1831", reused from the congregation's earlier church, is set low in the west wall. The north wall has an unrelieved rendered panel at its centre.

The north-west ancillary range is single-storey with a shallow hipped roof clad in copper sheeting. It has four segmental-headed window openings set in slightly recessed surrounds to east and west, with similar smaller openings to the northernmost bays. These are three-over-three sashes with segmental heads. The entrance to the hall is a double doorway set under a very wide segmental arch with recessed surround and panelled hardwood doors.

The interior contains a raised dais in light oak at the northern end, with a light hardwood floor and light oak altar, pulpit and organ. The central section of the ceiling is raised and coffered, its margin defined by moulding. Walls are sectioned by applied timber strips running full-height, emphasising the loftiness of the space; alternating tiled and plastered sections further articulate the surfaces. Behind the altar is a full-height unattributed mural painting depicting figures in a rowing boat on a stormy sea. The windows have moulded timber architraves. A wide obscure-glazed opening leads to the narthex porch with double doors and flanking doors. The porch has a hardwood block floor and doors to lavatories. The ancillary range contains a meeting hall with vestry/office, kitchen and lavatories.

History

The Unitarian congregation in Plymouth traces its origins to 1662, when the clergy of St Andrew's parish refused to adopt the revised Book of Common Prayer imposed by Parliament. The vicar, Reverend George Hughes, and the lecturer, Thomas Martyn, were imprisoned on Drake's Island for their dissent. The congregation lacked a settled place of worship or settled minister until the Act of Toleration in 1689 granted greater security to dissenters. By around 1702, under Reverend Nathaniel Harding, the congregation had settled near Treville Street and built their own meeting-house there. During the ministry of Reverend Henry Moore, the congregation moved towards Unitarianism. In 1831, the meeting-house was demolished and a new Unitarian chapel opened in 1832 on the same site, with W J Odgers as minister. This church was destroyed during the Second World War blitz on Plymouth on the night of 20 March 1941. The congregation hoped to rebuild on the same site, but Plymouth's post-war reconstruction plan required compulsory purchase of the area, forcing them to find a new location. The current building was designed by the Louis de Soissons Partnership and built in 1957-8, forming a coherent group with the adjacent Catherine Street Baptist Church (designed by the same architect), the 15th-century parish church of St Andrew and the 18th and 19th-century Synagogue.