Former Royal Naval Hospital the Church of the Good Shepherd is a Grade II listed building in the Plymouth local planning authority area, England. First listed on 1 May 1975. Church.
Former Royal Naval Hospital the Church of the Good Shepherd
- WRENN ID
- seventh-eave-mallow
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Plymouth
- Constituency
- Plymouth Sutton and Devonport MP: Luke Pollard (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 1 May 1975
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Former Royal Naval Hospital the Church of the Good Shepherd, High Street, City of Plymouth
- OS grid reference
- SX 467 547
- Coordinates
- 50.37254, -4.15651
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of the Good Shepherd is a chapel, originally part of the former Royal Naval Hospital, built in 1883 and restored following war damage between 1945 and 1946. The building is constructed primarily of Plymouth limestone rubble with limestone dressings and has dry slate roofs with coped ends.
The architectural style is Gothic Revival, largely incorporating early English details. The plan comprises a nave, a semicircular chancel, north and south aisles with integral east porches, a short transept to the north aisle, a small apse to the south aisle, and a tower with a baptistry in the southwest corner.
Exterior features include stiff-leaf capitals, nail-head ornament, and shaft rings. There are cusped and traceried two-light windows with nook shafts and carved capitals, six chancel windows with linked hood moulds over pointed arches, and a punched trefoil band between gabled dormers. A large two-centred arched window is found at the west end of the nave, above a porch. The tower has three diminishing stages topped with a steep spire and finial.
The interior is brightly painted white with a natural wood, hammer-beam roof carried on slender wooden posts. A moulded pointed arch spans the chancel, and a fan roof covers the chancel area. Fittings include a marble font with quatrefoils, a second font constructed from a ship’s bollard and gun fragment, pitch-pine pews, and various ships' badges. A war memorial is also present.
Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "engineers' Gothic," the church is situated within well-maintained grounds, forming part of a significant military hospital complex.
Local climate
Former Royal Naval Hospital the Church of the Good Shepherd sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 990 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 80% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 89% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 9 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 91% of listed buildings. Of these, 3 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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