Baptist Church Including The Front Area Walls And Gate Piers

Baptist Church on Newport Street, Tiverton

This Baptist church was built in 1876 by GS Bridgman of Torquay. The building is listed Grade II and includes the front area walls and gate piers.

The church displays an Italianate medieval design. The front elevation is constructed of squared grey Westleigh stone rubble with dressings of Bath stone, with some details in reddish Paignton stone and cream brick. The rear and side walls are built in red brick with cream brick dressings. The roof is tarred slate with a crested ridge-tile and red terracotta finials.

The front is two storeys tall, featuring a dominant gabled centre flanked by lower, narrower wings. The centre contains a round arched doorway with broad pilasters having foliated capitals. The arch has carved spandrels and a gabled hood. Panelled double doors are set beneath a stone tympanum inscribed in raised letters reading "ENTER INTO HIS GATES WITH THANKSGIVING". Above the doorway is a large round arched window containing four round arched lights arranged in pairs under two larger round arches. The tops of these arches contain two blind round panels holding green balls. In the head of the window is a multi-cusped round light flanked by two blind round lights containing red balls. The relieving arch has alternating grey and red voussoirs. The window contains coloured glass. Below the window, around the head of the doorway, is a panel of imitation slate hanging in stone.

The gable is finished with three large finials—one at the apex and one at each side—designed like square columns with friezes above resembling little belfries, the whole topped by pointed roofs covered with imitation slates. The two ground storey windows flanking the centre doorway are round arched, as are the two doorways in the wings and the two windows above them. All ground storey openings have gabled hoods echoing the main doorway. The doors are panelled with traceried fanlights. The upper windows are of two lights with wooden glazing-bars; the lights are round arched with a circular light in the window head.

The front area wall is of coursed stone with chamfered coping. It contains three pairs of stone gate piers with a matching pier at each end. The piers are square with shaped tops designed with gables facing in all four directions. The iron gates and railings on top of the walls are mid or late 20th century replacements.

Two inscribed stone tablets are set into the wall face. The left tablet reads "THESE MEMORIAL STONES WERE LAID BY J LANE ESQRE. JP ON MONDAY APRIL 17th 1876. GLORIO DEO", with smaller letters at the bottom reading "G.S. BRIDGMAN ARCHITECT" and "W. BARRONS & SON BUILDERS". The right-hand tablet reads "THE PREVIOUS CHAPEL ADJOINED THIS BUILDING AND WAS BUILT IN 1730 ON THE SITE OF THE OLD MEETING HOUSE. CHURCH FOUNDED 1607".

The side walls feature round arched windows in the upper storey matching those at the front. Beneath them are panels of patterned stonework, and ground storey windows have flat stone lintels. Giant pilaster-strips run between the windows. The rear wall, clearly visible from The Works, has a three-bay projection with a pent roof and a gable in the centre. The openings—a doorway flanked by two windows—match those on the side walls.

The interior was not inspected at the time of listing.

The facade is a prominent and notable feature in the surrounding townscape. Contemporary newspaper coverage from The Exeter Flying Post of 19 April 1876 described the chapel proper as one large parallelogram, sixty-nine feet long and forty-five feet wide, exclusive of the organ loft and vestries. It was designed so that the vestries and organ loft could easily be removed and the platform carried back to form a chapel eighty-one feet long by forty-five feet wide. The woodwork was to be of varnished red deal and pitch pine. The organ loft was positioned behind the platform, flanked by two vestries with classrooms above. A separate Sunday School building fronted The Works and is separately listed.

According to historical records, the Civil War fortifications of Tiverton Castle extended as far as the site of the Old Baptist Meeting House, which previously occupied this location.