Methodist Church of St John, with attached Hall and Former Sunday School is a Grade II listed building in the Conwy local planning authority area, Wales. First listed on 25 July 1994. Church.

Methodist Church of St John, with attached Hall and Former Sunday School

WRENN ID
ruined-plaster-rye
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Conwy
Country
Wales
Date first listed
25 July 1994
Type
Church
Source
Cadw listing

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Description

The Methodist Church of St John, along with its attached hall and former Sunday school, was constructed in the 19th century. The church is built of random polygonal granite with freestone dressings, topped with a slate roof and red tiled cresting.

The church's design incorporates a nave with narrow lean-to aisles and a clerestory, alongside an apsidal sanctuary. A striking feature is the tower, which has a brooch spire set off to the northwest, and the hall and former Sunday school extend to the southwest. The north side features a five-light window with geometrical tracery incorporating a star. The tower rises in three stages, accentuated by clasping buttresses. A doorway on the west side is framed by a deep, moulded arch with splayed responds. Above the doorway is a two-light window, followed by tall, narrow lancets and a frieze, culminating in the brooch spire. A buttressed porch on the northeast has banded, clustered shafts and quarterfoil moulding to its arch, with an ogee hood mould. The aisles are marked by paired, broad, foiled, and cusped lancets between buttresses, incorporating continuous hood moulds and string courses. The clerestory has two-light, reticulated windows with plain impost and sill bands. A pair of two-light reticulated windows are found in the east transept, alongside a rose window at the gable apex. The apsidal sanctuary is characterized by a decorated window on each face. A west transept connects the church to the hall, which originally served as a schoolroom and was completed before the church itself. It was used for services until the church's completion in 1883, and features a canted north end with a gable in each face, each containing a three-light, flat-headed perpendicular window with a transom. A projecting gabled bay to the west includes a canted porch in the angle, surmounted by a louvered bell turret with a scalloped slate spirelet. The west gable showcases three foiled lancet windows. A flat-roofed block adjoins the south, with the cross-gabled hall range beyond, added in 1908 as the Sunday school. This range exhibits similar detailing, featuring stepped lancet windows in the gables and square-headed perpendicular windows elsewhere.

Inside, the nave arcade consists of four bays, with the western bay being blind walled and aisle-less. Cylindrical shafts on high bases support moulded arches, and similar arches form the four sides of the crossing. Corbelled stone engaged shafts carry the timber wall posts of the principal trusses, supporting a braced queen post roof with slender crown posts and a boarded ceiling. A narrow passage aisle runs along the sides. The apsidal sanctuary has a boarded and ribbed vaulted roof, with vaulting sprung from wall shafts forming continuous arcading with windows in alternating faces. The pulpit sits beneath the sanctuary arch towards the west, mounted on a panelled wood base, with wood traceried communion rails. The altar and reredos were designed as a unified piece, both crafted from pale oak, with the reredos featuring free-standing, gabletted arcading, fleurons to gables, and crocketted pinnacles. The organ, located in the west transept, is housed in a richly worked case with traceried panels and crocketted pinnacles. A two-bay arcade, filled by a panelled and partly glazed screen, separates the church from the adjoining hall.

The church contains a variety of stained glass. An unusual design in the north window features a pattern of blossoming branches and a small portrait roundel, dated 1885. The east transept window is dated 1932, while the sanctuary and west transept windows form a series depicting highly coloured fruit and flower emblems, dated 1888. The remaining windows primarily feature pale coloured glass with abstract floral emblems, potentially representing the original designs.

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