Deer Park Baptist Church

Deer Park Baptist Church

A Baptist chapel built in rock-faced coursed squared grey limestone with Bath stone dressings and a slate roof punctuated by small gabled ventilators. The coped shouldered gable is topped with a finial.

The front elevation displays Decorated Gothic style across three bays, divided by stepped buttresses that formerly carried octagonal spirelets (now replaced with pyramid caps). The centrepiece is a large pointed window with hoodmould and moulded arch and column shafts. This window is subdivided into two 2-light pointed windows with column shafts, sexfoil heads, and a large sexfoil above. A steeply gabled central porch projects between lean-to lobbies, with a coped gable and a large ashlar pointed moulded arch on column shafts framing a sexfoil rose window over paired Caernarvon-arched entrances with column shafting. The centre window is framed by buttresses with ashlar quoins at lower level, a step, gablet, further step, and ashlar upper part with a blind cusped gabled panel under a square terminal that breaks through the gable line. On either side of the porch, the lean-to lobbies contain two paired small cusped lancets under quatrefoil-pierced parapets. Buttresses flank each side with quoins and tall ashlar cross-gabled finials. Coping at the outer ends links to the base of the outer buttresses, which feature quoins and ashlar set-off. Simple long outer windows consist of cusped lancets on each side with hoodmould and cusped transom at gallery level. The gable apex contains a stepped triplet of narrow rectangular louvred vents. To the left, a narrow link bay to Walmer House has a small first-floor sash with a blank trefoil head over a doorway with shouldered head, all beneath a gable with quatrefoil panel in a lean-to porch.

The right side elevation comprises six bays with a full-height basement and seven dividing buttresses featuring four set-offs and black brick quoins (yellow brick to the first two buttresses). Five long pointed cusped lights, divided at gallery level by sill and cusped head below, run the full height. The basement has cambered-headed 4-pane sashes with yellow brick heads. Yellow brick is used at the eaves. An apsidal canted end features three traceried 2-light windows over a lean-to basement and ground floor. The ground floor has two single-light windows on each side, while the basement has two pointed windows with black brick voussoirs on each side and a central pointed door between buttresses. The end wall of the lean-to contains a 2-light window on each floor.

The entrance unusually leads onto a double lobby with a Gothic arch to the inner lobby, which itself has a further rose window and paired doorways. The spacious interior contains a raked end gallery carried on cast-iron quatrefoil columns with panelled and columned front. At the opposite end is a tall arch to the organ recess with corbelled shafts and foliated capitals. A good double-coved six-bay roof is concave to the lower stage and flat to the upper stage, with diamond-shaped ventilators to the top. The arched-braced trusses are carried on further arched members rising from stunted wall shafts with foliated bases. Other roof details include scroll-moulded tie-beams and central queen posts. The furnishings are generally simple pitch-pine Gothic. The organ was brought in from a chapel in Pontypridd in 1970. The schoolroom below contains six cast-iron scallop-capped columns made by Macfarlane & Co of Glasgow.