Former Park Road Methodist Church

Former Park Road Methodist Church

This Methodist church was built in 1904–5 to designs by J. Jameson Green of Liverpool. Robert Marriott of Rushden undertook the construction, with glasswork by S. Evans of Smethwick. The site also includes a church hall (the original chapel) of 1890 and a link vestibule added in the 1980s.

The building is constructed in red brick with stone dressings and a slate roof with coped gables. It displays an elaborate Perpendicular style, featuring buttresses, traceried windows, and carved details. The church occupies a corner site with its ritual orientation to the south towards Latimer Street. A north-east tower rises at the corner, with the chancel hidden behind meeting rooms. The main body comprises a nave, transepts, and an east porch.

A late 20th-century north-east vestibule connects the church to the church hall situated to the south-east on the left of the Park Road front. The church hall itself, dating to 1890, has a large six-light window in Geometrical style positioned above a projecting vestibule beneath a pentice roof. Between the hall and church stands a 1980s vestibule with a low staircase tower to its right, featuring a parapet and pyramidal roof.

The north-east end of the church displays a five-light window above a projecting porch with angle buttresses and a basket-arched double doorway. The north-east tower projects prominently and includes a canted projection with pentice roof behind battlements. On the Griffith Street elevation, the tower has a double door within a Gothic arched doorway with windows above. The upper stages of the tower are stone-faced and feature triple windows on all sides beneath a parapet with corner domed turrets (a former wooden spirelet was removed in 1986).

The nave sides contain two tiers of arched three-light windows. The transepts project forward with five-light windows on both levels. An unusual projecting element to the right comprises a group of meeting rooms in domestic style with an entrance doorway and a two-storied canted bay, creating a visual link with the surrounding street housing.

Interior

The church interior retains a wide gallery on three sides, supported on iron columns, with a further gallery behind the pulpit that was remodelled as a Second World War memorial. An elaborate hammer-beam roof rises from curved braces, with gables for the transepts and cusped panels between the beams and collars; the areas above and to the sides are boarded. The entrance vestibule contains many coloured-glass panels with elaborate Art Nouveau-style leading, while the main windows also feature coloured glass with patterned leading. An almost complete set of contemporary pews survives on both ground floor and in the galleries. The staircases to the galleries feature fine cast-iron balustrades.

The church hall has arcaded sides with more recent partitioning behind them and a suspended ceiling, but the original curved braces supporting an open timber roof remain visible.

The ensemble of church, meeting rooms, and church hall presents a picturesque and successful composition when viewed from both streets, with the prominent corner tower as a defining feature. The church interior is little altered, with fine glass and fittings surviving beneath its impressive roof structure.