Avenue Methodist Church And Attached Sunday School To North East

Avenue Methodist Church, together with an attached Sunday school, was built in 1876 and extensively altered in 1905. The church was constructed following the arrival of the railway in 1874, which contributed to the rapid expansion of Minehead as a resort. The land for the church was donated by GF Luttrell of Dunster Castle.

The church is built of snecked rubblestone with ashlar dressings, and has a crested slate roof. It is virtually cruciform in plan, with an apsidal east end. The south aisle, originally the main church, now comprises four bays with a transeptal east gable. This section features mainly two-light windows with plate tracery, set within gauged stone arches and hoodmoulds. A single-storey, hipped-roofed vestry is attached to the east gable return. A west lean-to porch provides access via a pointed-arched doorway with cusped lancets and colonettes. The 1905 north extension is on a larger scale and employs a Free Gothic style with some influence from French Early Gothic architecture. The semicircular apse has tall paired lancet windows and a decorative ashlar and rubblestone frieze above, topped by a semi-conical roof.

The interior of the church has five bays with a bold arch-braced timber roof supported by carved brackets. Dog-tooth carving adorns the arches, and the arcades feature polychromatic stonework with circular and octagonal piers and moulded and chamfered arches of two orders. Trumpet-scalloped capitals grace the marble piers. The church contains pine benches, dado panelling, and a pulpit. Stained glass windows with floral motifs are found throughout, while the clerestory exhibits herringbone glazing.

The Sunday school, attached to the northeast of the church, is constructed of English bond brick with limestone bands and dressings. Its front (south) gable has dentilled bargeboards with a pendentive, and a slate roof. The gabled south front, in a Free Tudor style, features a transomed first-floor window with cusped lights above a pentice, which is buttressed to the slate roof. Stone-mullioned windows with sunk spandrels and cusped heads flank a stone doorway with a four-centred arch, its jambs incorporating carved rosettes. Dormers with leaded four-light windows are present on the returns. The interior features a four-bay arch-braced timber roof.

A house extends to the rear (north) of the Sunday school, displaying gabled and half-hipped roofs and a Gothic Revival style. Its west front showcases a double-gabled two-bay design with a central door and transomed windows. The interior of this house has not been inspected.