Wesleyan Methodist Church And Attached Walls And Railings

CHARD

ST3308 FORE STREET 756-1/4/82 (South side) 29/07/76 Wesleyan Methodist Church and attached walls and railings (Formerly Listed as: FORE STREET (South side) Wesleyan Methodist Church)

GV II

Church. 1895 by R Curwen. Flemish bond brick with stone bands and Bath stone dressings; weatherboarding to clerestory; crested slate roof. PLAN: chapel with gable facing street to north and canted sanctuary end; Sunday School and offices to rear. Geometrical Gothic Revival style. EXTERIOR: symmetrical facade is dominated by full-height coloured glass window in Decorated style set in gable end which has hexagonal quoins supported on corbels at ground-floor door height. Double doors to each side in set-forward gabled porches with pointed arches and quatrefoil tympana; backing on to gable cross wings with 2-light trefoiled windows with cinquefoil plate under pointed-arch hoodmould. To rear of these, east and west elevations have coloured leaded 3-light windows with stone mullions and trefoil heads to aisles and similar wooden ones to clerestory. INTERIOR: pointed arch on foliate capitals and engaged shafts to canted apse, which has continuous wooden pointed-arched clerestory lights with moulded capitals and bases to columns fronting trefoil-headed lights with coloured glass. Nave has timber arcade joists supporting shallow-arched bracing to 4-bay arcade with quatrefoil frieze surmounting similar pointed arched clerestory, each bay having coloured glass to three 3-light trefoil-headed windows to centre; bay adjoining sanctuary has arcades brought forward with pointed-arched spandrels and stone corbels. 5-bay arch-braced roof with 2-centred arches to bay flanking rebuilt gallery; aisle lean-to roofs have corbels supporting timber knees. Coloured glass with same Art Nouveau patterns to all windows. FITTINGS include organ, wrought-iron sanctuary rail, fine Gothic-style pulpit and benches with quatrefoil pierced dado rail. To rear of chapel is entrance hall with turned baluster staircase and schoolroom with plank dado, gallery and mock hammer-beam roof. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: walls and railings to front. (Pevsner N: Buildings of England: South Somerset: London: 1958-: P.118).

Listing NGR: ST3238608582