Avenue Methodist Church And Attached Sunday School To North East

MINEHEAD

SS9646 THE AVENUE 900-1/3/79 (North side) Avenue Methodist Church and attached Sunday School to north-east

II

Methodist church. 1876; extended and remodelled in 1905, the mid C19 church being made into the south aisle. Snecked rubblestone with ashlar dressings, crested slate roof. PLAN: Virtually cruciform aisled plan with apsidal east end. Gothic Revival style. EXTERIOR: 4-bay south aisle with transeptal east gable has mostly 2-light windows with plate tracery under gauged stone arches and hoodmoulds; single-storey hipped-roofed vestry attached to east gable return; west lean-to porch has pointed-arched doorway and cusped lancets with colonettes to west return. The 1905 work to the north is on a larger scale and in a Free Gothic style with some French Early Gothic influence. The semicircular apse has tall paired lancet windows with a decorative ashlar and rubblestone frieze above; the roof is semi-conical; the west end of the north aisle is similar. INTERIOR: of 5 bays with bold arch-braced timber roof on carved brackets; dog-tooth carving to arches; polychromatic stonework to arcades with circular and octagonal piers and moulded and chamfered arches of 2 orders; trumpet-scalloped capitals to marble piers. Pine benches, dado and pulpit. 1905 glass with stained glass floral motifs; herringbone glazing to clerestory. Sunday School to north-east of church, built of English bond brick with limestone bands and dressings; dentilled bargeboards with pendentive to front (south) gable; slate roof. Gabled south front in Free Tudor style has 5-light transomed first-floor window with cusped lights over pentice with buttresses to slate roof; stone-mullioned windows with sunk spandrels to cusped heads flank stone doorway with 4-centred arch dying into jambs and carved rosettes, etc. to spandrels. Dormers with leaded 4-light windows to returns. INTERIOR: has 4-bay arch-braced timber roof. House extending to rear (north) has gabled and half-hipped roofs; in Gothic Revival style with double-gabled 2-bay west front having central door and transomed windows: interior not inspected. HISTORY: The building of the Avenue Methodist Church quickly followed the arrival of the railway in 1874, after which the resort considerably expanded. The church was built on land donated by GF Luttrell of Dunster Castle (Dunster CP).

Listing NGR: SS9700146283