Methodist Church

A Wesleyan Methodist church was built in 1867-9 by J R N Haswell of North Shields. It is constructed from dressed local grey limestone rubble, with red sandstone and Bathstone dressings, and has a slate roof with stone-coped gable ends and scalloped red clay ridge tiles. The building is in the High Victorian Gothic style, influenced by early French Gothic architecture. The plan includes a nave, chancel, transepts, north and south porches at the west end, a round stair tower on the south-west corner, and a vestry in the east angle of the south transept.

The gabled west front has five lancet windows on the ground floor, with hoodmoulds, and a plate-tracery rose window within a moulded two-centred arch in the gable above. The impost on the right-hand side continues as the cornice of the round corner tower. A string course runs around the tower, which has lancets above it and a copper-clad conical roof with a wrought iron finial. A large buttress with set-offs and a gabled north porch with a moulded two-centred arch doorway are on the left-hand corner, featuring plank doors and wrought iron hinges. The right-hand (south) porch is set back behind the tower on the south elevation. The south elevation, including the transept, has lancet windows, and the transept gable features a round window. The apsidal east end of the chancel has lancets; the vestry on the south side has a lean-to roof from which a battered stack rises. The north elevation was not investigated.

Inside, a gallery occupies the west end of the nave, supported by iron posts. The nave roof is constructed with tie-beam trusses, arch braces on stone corbels, and king-posts; the transepts have common rafter roofs with ashlar pieces. The chancel has a scissor-braced rafter roof with ashlar pieces. A moulded two-centred chancel arch sits on marble colonnettes with capitals and corbels, while similar arches define the transepts. All the main furnishings and fittings remain intact, including benches, a pulpit with traceried panels, a reading desk, choir stalls, an iron and brass sanctuary rail, and a wooden altar table. The organ, housed in a recess on the north side of the chancel, has painted pipes. The lancets in the apex have stained glass dating from the 1860s and 70s, designed by Heaton, Butler and Bayne.