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

CHELTENHAM

SO9522NW NORTH PLACE 630-1/10/591 (East side) 05/05/72 Portland Chapel (Chapel Rock Gymnasium) with attached arches, wall and railings (Formerly Listed as: NORTH PLACE North Place Evangelical Church)

GV II

Chapel, now gym with attached arches, wall and railings. 1816 at the expense of Robert Capper, for the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection; with portico added 1865. Cost »5-6,000. Ashlar over brick with hipped slate roof. Plain rectangular box with sill band, first-floor band and parapet, (latter inscribed Countess of Huntingdon's Connection). Gothic Revival style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys on basement, 3 first-floor windows. 2 tiers of windows, the lower tier have wooden mullion and transom windows with fixed lights, the upper in pointed-arched recesses with Y-tracery. Entrance: steps to central pointed-arched doorway within portico with paired Roman Doric columns. Crowning frieze, cornice and low parapet. Similar 4-window returns have similar fenestration. Basement has 10/10 sashes. INTERIOR: retains galleries on iron column clusters , 2 staircases with stick balusters and wreathed handrails. reputed to retain king post roof. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: pedestrian arches to right and left, attached wall at left approx 1.5m high which extends for approx 14m. Railings to sides of porch have scrolled lozenge motif. Area railings are alternately arched sticks and trefoil-headed. HISTORICAL NOTE: Formerly known as Portland Chapel, this was the first nonconformist Gothic Revival building erected in Cheltenham; the portico may have come from another chapel. In 1819 it was gifted to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection. Rowe noted in his Cheltenham Guide, written in 1845 but published in 1850 that the interior had spacious galleries'. Formerly had a iron chancel screen and font cover produced by William Letheran's Vulcan Iron Works. Little describes this as acharming .. facade that happily blends churchwarden Gothic windows with porch columns in Roman Doric'. Abuts to rear No.32 Portland Street (qv), probably built as

the vicarage. (Sampson A and Blake S: A Cheltenham Companion: Cheltenham: 1993-: 70,90; RCHME: Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses: Gloucestershire: London: 1986-: 76; Blake S: Cheltenham's Churches and Chapels AD 773-1883: Cheltenham: 1979-: 9; Rowe G: Illustrated Cheltenham Guide: Cheltenham: 1850-1969: 61; Little B: Cheltenham: London: 1952-: 55).

Listing NGR: SO9508122707