Church of St John and Adjoining Community Hall is a Grade II* listed building in the Cumberland local planning authority area, England. First listed on 6 June 1951. Church, community hall.
Church of St John and Adjoining Community Hall
- WRENN ID
- deep-basalt-rush
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Cumberland
- Constituency
- Whitehaven and Workington MP: Josh MacAlister (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 6 June 1951
- Type
- Church, community hall
- OS grid reference
- NY 004 284
- Coordinates
- 54.64175, -3.54433
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St John and the adjoining Community Hall is a chapel of ease, now serving as a parish church and community hall. It was built between 1822 and 1823 by architect Thomas Hardwick, with additions made in 1846 and 1888. The structure is made of hammer-dressed calciferous sandstone sourced from Schoose and Hunday Quarries, featuring ashlar eaves, pilasters, and a plinth. The roof is covered with graduated green slate and has modillioned overhanging eaves and gable pediments.
The building has a 5-bay nave and chancel with a west portico, and a square ridge tower added in 1846 topped with a bell cupola. There is a north vestry and an attached community hall added in 1881 to the east.
The exterior includes double panelled west doors with a patterned over-light set in a stone architrave beneath a plain frieze and console-bracketed cornice. Flanking panelled doors are also located in stone architraves under large round-headed niches, all within a tetrastyle Tuscan portico. The tall round-headed side windows are framed in stone architraves.
Inside, the church features galleries on three sides supported by slender fluted cast iron columns, with segmental recesses at the rear of the galleries to illuminate the pews below. The flat plaster ceiling is adorned with geometric ribs and coats-of-arms. A baldacchino and font cover designed by J N Comper in 1930, as well as a tall 20th-century carved oak pulpit, are notable interior elements. The community hall, which adjoins the east wall, has a north gable doorway that is offset to the left, featuring an ashlar surround dated 1881 below a drip mould. It also has three-light mullioned windows, one to the left and another above at the gable centre on the first floor. Tall three-light side wall windows illuminate the interior, which is largely open beneath decorative hammer beam roof trusses.
Historically, the church was constructed in the style of St Paul's, Covent Garden, at a cost of £10,000 by the architect who restored that church.
Local climate
Church of St John and Adjoining Community Hall sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 1,540 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 99% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 99% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 21 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 78% of listed buildings. Of these, 9 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 2 transactions since 2020
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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