Former Albany Road Methodist Church

Former Albany Road Methodist Church

This is an ambitious Gothic chapel mixing Decorated and Perpendicular styles, built from snecked rock-faced Pennant sandstone with lighter Bath stone dressings and a slate roof behind coped gables. The building occupies the corner of Albany Road and Wellfield Road.

The plan is unusual and superficially resembles an Anglican church. It comprises a north-south nave across the corner, with a transept on the east side and a shallower transept on the west side not visible from the street, where the pulpit and communion table were situated. A porch tower stands at the south end of the nave, with an integral attached hall immediately to its west facing Albany Road.

The four-stage tower has set-back buttresses in the lower three stages. In the south elevation is a doorway with three orders of shafts with foliage capitals to a two-centre arch, and double boarded doors with strap hinges. The east elevation has a single window in the lower stage. The tall second stage displays double transomed two-light windows with Decorated tracery in both south and east elevations, with gabled canopies enclosing blind quatrefoils. The shorter third stage has pairs of small lancets in each face. The upper stage is narrower, constructed of ashlar, with polygonal clasping buttresses with thin attached pinnacles to the outer facets rising from the angles of the third stage. Each face has a pair of two-light belfry windows with a diagonal shaft between, probably intended to be carried up as a pinnacle. Above the belfry windows the walls are of rock-faced stone. An embattled parapet crowns the tower above a string course and ashlar band. The corner pinnacles are as broad as the buttresses and have two tiers of shallow panels with large crocketed finials.

The nave and transept both have lean-to aisles with square-headed windows and plain parapets with moulded freestone coping. All aisle windows are boarded up. In the angles of the aisles on both sides of the transept are porches facing Wellfield Road, each with a two-centred arch and hood mould with head stops, and double boarded doors with strap hinges. The nave has two bays on either side of the transept, with three-light Perpendicular clerestorey windows and square-headed aisle windows. The transept is three-bay with similar clerestorey and aisle windows. The east wall facing Wellfield Road has set-back buttresses crowned with tall pinnacles (the finial missing on the north side). A six-light east window has Decorated tracery. The north nave window, now partly obscured by a later detached hall immediately to the north, is six-light with Decorated tracery, flanked by two square-headed windows and with boarded-up doorways at the right and left ends.

The integral three-bay, two-storey hall stands to the west of the tower with a string course between storeys continuous with the tower. In the lower storey facing Wellfield Road are buttresses capped by gablets with pointed quatrefoils. Attached shafts stand on the buttresses and were probably intended to be continued as pinnacles. The parapet is plain. The arched lower-storey windows are boarded up, but the upper-storey windows are two-light with Decorated tracery and linked hoods. The faceted south elevation is gabled to the centre while the facets continue the parapet of the east wall. A single arched window appears in the lower storey, and a three-light Decorated upper-storey window has a hood mould with foliage stops and an ashlar surround. Below the sill are three blank panels.

The rear elevation facing the rear of Angus Street is brick. The nave has clerestorey windows similar to those on the front, and the west transept has a five-light window with early Decorated tracery.

Internally, the nave and transept have Perpendicular-style arcades with diagonally-set piers with attached filleted shafts. A lowered ceiling has been inserted, although the building is said to retain its original four-centred boarded ceiling. A dais in the west transept accommodated the altar table. To its left stands the Perpendicular-style stone pulpit, which has a moulded base and blind Gothic panelling below a foliage cornice.