The Lantern,Including Former Sunday School,Front Wall And Railings

The Lantern, including former Sunday School, front wall and railings, is a community centre on the north side of High Street in Ilfracombe, formerly serving as a Congregational church with attached Sunday school.

The church was built in 1818 and underwent significant remodelling and refronting in the early 1880s. The Sunday school was rebuilt by WH Gould of Ilfracombe in 1884. The building is constructed from local greenish New Road stone rubble. The church front and right-hand side wall feature details in white and red (Mansfield) dressed stone, cast iron, and polished granite. The left side wall and rear wall of the church use yellowish dressed stone (probably Bath stone) with some red brick. The rear end of the side wall and the entire rear wall are hung with old local slates displaying an irregular, silvery surface. The roofs are slated.

The exterior presents two architectural styles. The fronts of the former church and Sunday school, together with the front side walls of the church, are in Italian Gothic style. The remainder is in English Decorated style.

The church has a two-stage gabled front with an ornately carved stringcourse between white voussoirs. The lower stage features a centre doorway flanked by triple openings containing a doorway and two windows. The centre doorway is flanked by paired granite columns with a round cinquefoil window in the arch head. The triple openings are separated by paired cast-iron columns. Doors have small square panels; the upper panels in the centre doors display decorative ironwork, while those in the outer doors contain coloured glass. The upper stage has two middle windows, each with a round cusped window above, set within a shallow recess with pointed arch and flanked by granite columns. All windows contain coloured glass.

The right-hand side wall is similar but plainer. The front of the left-hand side wall is even plainer, with a traceried window in the upper stage, but the lower stage features a triple pointed arch of brick that evidently infills an earlier opening. The rear of the left side wall has 3-light windows with pointed arches and cusped, interlacing tracery in the lower stage, with flat-headed 2-light windows with ogee-headed lights above. A large window in the gable contains five round cusped lights.

The former Sunday school, set well back to the right, has a flat-headed chamfered doorway at its centre inscribed "CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL" with "A.D. 1884" on either side. Pointed single-light flanking windows flank this doorway, with a 3-light window with pointed arch above. The lights have pointed heads and are surmounted by a large round cinquefoiled light.

The interior features a panelled and bracketed pine gallery at the west end, extending to either side on cast-iron clustered columns. The roof is queen post with arched braces.

Along the street frontage runs a low stone wall topped with decorated iron railings. At the centre are a pair of iron gates flanked by gate piers of alternating red and white stone, topped with massive stone caps in Gothic style. An ornate iron overthrow with lampholder and lamp complete the street frontage features.