Portland Chapel (Chapel Rock Gymnasium) With Attached Arches Wall And Railings

This is a chapel, now a gymnasium, built in 1816 at the expense of Robert Capper for the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection, and with a portico added in 1865. The cost was approximately £5,000 to £6,000. The building is constructed of ashlar over brick, with a hipped slate roof. It is in a Gothic Revival style.

The main body of the building is a plain rectangular block with a sill band, a first-floor band, and a parapet inscribed "Countess of Huntingdon's Connection." It has two storeys over a basement, and three windows on the first floor. The lower-floor windows have wooden mullion and transom windows with fixed lights. The upper-floor windows are set in pointed-arched recesses with Y-tracery. Steps lead to a central pointed-arched doorway within a portico featuring paired Roman Doric columns, a crowning frieze, a cornice, and a low parapet. Similar returns with four windows display matching fenestration. The basement has 10/10 sash windows.

The interior retains galleries supported by iron column clusters, two staircases with stick balusters and wreathed handrails, and is believed to retain a king post roof. Attached to the right and left are pedestrian arches, and an approximately 14-meter-long wall, about 1.5 meters high, stands at the left side. The porch railings have a scrolled lozenge motif, and the area railings are alternately arched sticks and trefoil-headed.

This was the first nonconformist Gothic Revival building erected in Cheltenham. The portico may have been repurposed from another chapel. It was gifted to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection in 1819. The building was previously known as Portland Chapel and had an iron chancel screen and font cover produced by William Letheran's Vulcan Iron Works. It abuts the rear of No. 32 Portland Street, which was likely built as the vicarage.