Salem Baptist Chapel

Salem Baptist Chapel is a building with painted stucco walls and an artificial slate roof, dating from 1848. The chapel features a three-bay facade facing High Street, highlighted by a pedimental gable with deep eaves and short returns. It has round-arched windows on both storeys, each with moulded hoods supported by small corbels, although the glazing is modern and made of plastic. The round-arched doorway also has a similar hood and features 20th-century panelled doors. A wide stucco band runs between the storeys and above the upper windows, complemented by plain raised pilaster strips at each end. The upper band displays large lettering that reads ‘Salem Baptist Chapel’, and there is a tablet above indicating it was built in 1848.

The long side elevation facing Hope Street consists of three bays, each with rectangular windows on both storeys. Most windows are modern, except for a 16-pane sash window on the ground floor to the left. The rear elevation has two sills of blocked paired round-arched windows. To the left, there is a small two-storey vestry wing, which includes a door to the right and two four-pane sash windows to the left; there is a similar sash window on the first floor to the left, with a 20th-century window to the right.

Inside, there is a three-sided gallery built between 1848 and 1851, with deeply canted rear angles. The gallery front is made of timber, featuring square panels with blind trefoiled arches, finished with an applied grained effect and anaglypta on the panels and deep cove. Iron posts with a quatrefoil cross-section support the structure. The underside of the gallery on each side of the pulpit is boxed in to create an ante-room and vestry. The pulpit, dating from the late 19th century, has elaborate timber detailing, with a canted front and segmentally arched panels on colonettes. Below the large seat is a baptismal pool, and the seat itself is set on an ashlar plinth, with a timber rail on cast-iron uprights featuring foliage spandrels. The pews, also from a similar period, are skewed towards the outer bays of the ground floor. The late 19th-century ceiling is painted, boarded, and ribbed, adorned with two decorative roses. The rear lobby includes a large marginally glazed window and part-glazed early 20th-century doors with coloured Art Nouveau glass.