Flavel Memorial Chapel

The Flavel Memorial Chapel is a non-conformist chapel, originally Congregational and later United Reformed, built in 1895. Constructed of snecked limestone with Bathstone dressings and a slate roof featuring pierced crested ridge tiles, it stands close to the site of an earlier 18th-century chapel that was subsequently used as a Sunday school and later bombed in 1942.

The building is in a Decorated style, with two gabled porches projecting from the east end. The right-hand porch features a large, two-centred arch with a moulded surround and a hoodmould adorned with carved leafy label stops, leading to an original plank door with wrought-ironwork. The left-hand porch has a smaller doorway in a similar style and a first-floor two-light window with Decorated tracery. The main east front incorporates a large central four-light window flanked by two-light windows, all with two-centred arch heads and hoodmoulds featuring carved foliate label stops. A quatrefoil oculus sits under the gable apex, and both east and west gables have obelisk finials over shaped kneelers, stone coping, and apex crosses. The side walls have six bays, with buttresses and two-light windows to the central four bays.

The interior was not inspected, but is known to contain a particularly early non-conformist memorial to John Flavel (died 1691), a brass plaque celebrating his qualities. This memorial was originally in the Church of St Saviour, moved to the Foss Street chapel in 1709 and then relocated to this site in 1895. Several stone tablets commemorating 17th-century dissenters are set into the chapel walls. The chapel was built at a cost of £1200 on reclaimed land. John Flavel served as minister at the Church of St Saviour until 1662, after which he led a life of travelling, preaching in secret, and publishing six volumes of religious writing, pursued by authorities for his dissent.