Methodist Church With Attached Rooms And Front Boundary Walls And Railings

WELLS

ST5545 SOUTHOVER 662-1/5/241 (South side) 13/09/72 Methodist Church with attached rooms, and front boundary walls & railings

GV II

Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, with former Sunday School Rooms. Opened 1838, enlarged in 1865 and 1888. Ashlar stone front, rendered sides, hipped Welsh slate roof behind parapet. EXTERIOR: 2-storey front, 3 bays. Plinth, panelled end pilasters, band course between floors, cornice, shallow parapet with moulded coping. Semicircular arched windows in plain reveals, with 16-pane casements below and 12-pane above, all with interlaced bars to heads. Central entrance with pair of 3-panel doors set in stone doorcase having Doric attached columns and entablature with triglyphs and cornice, no pediment. 3-bay return elevation. Small C20 porch on east side, single storey, hipped roof. The far gable end also has two 16-pane sashes with interlaced bars to the arched heads. On the W is a single-storey schoolroom in squared local stonework with ashlar dressings, plain gabled slate roof, tall stone chimney stack. 3 bays, 2 pairs C20 doors bay 1, an octagonal projection with hipped roof to bay 2, with slim simple sash windows in the 3 leading faces, two 3-pane sash windows in bay 3, all in segmental arched openings, 3 rooflights over. INTERIOR: plain plastered walls, at the 'E' end an organ in recess with moulded arch on Corinthianesque pilasters, and a gallery with panelled front. At the entrance end is a gallery on 2 slender cast-iron Doric columns, with a deep cove to a stripped pine panelled front; the gallery has 5 rows of panelled pews. Doors are C19 panelled with raised mouldings, and there is some tinted glass in the arched heads of lights. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: extending from the schoolroom projection eastwards, in two sections, on low stone walling, are late C20 railings with square mid C19 stone piers with double semicircular tops, no gates but bollards in openings. HISTORICAL NOTE: the chapel stands on the site probably formerly occupied by a Presbyterian meeting-house of 1740, and before this a chapel dedicated to St Thomas A Becket. (Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses: Stell C: South West England: London: 1991-: 200; Serel T: History of Wells (lecture 08.05.58): 1858-).

Listing NGR: ST5485045386