Merchants Hill Baptist Church

The Merchants Hill Baptist Church is a late 19th-century chapel built in a simplified Romanesque style inspired by George Morgan. It is constructed of rubble stone with Bath stone dressings and a slate roof. The front of the chapel features a gable, with a large rose window above a central porch. The Gothic-style porch has a projecting stone canopy supported by freestanding Corinthian-style columns with pedestal bases. The underside of the canopy is trefoil-shaped and inscribed with "Baptist Chapel 1888." The arched doorway within the porch has a decorative roundel in the head and is accessed by boarded double doors. Flanking the porch are tall round-arched windows with 20th-century glazing. The rose window is composed of a central multifoil light surrounded by tracery of eight circular lights. An upper gable vent and kneelered coping are also visible. The side elevations each contain four round-arched windows similar to those on the front gable.

Entry leads directly into a vestibule containing a quarter-turn staircase with winders leading to a gallery. Opposite the entrance, the vestibule has a three-light window with patterned glass. Side lobbies encompass the gallery stairs; from these, six-panel double doors open into the main chapel. The auditorium is of medium size, primarily dating from 1888, but with an ornate gallery added around 1900, extending to all four sides. The gallery is supported by six slender cast-iron columns with spiral-turned shafts and foliated capitals, featuring a cast iron balustrade that curves to accommodate a raked organ loft. The gallery front has shaped railings decorated with pierced acanthus leaf ornament in an Art Nouveau style. A raised pulpit platform has stairs on each side, featuring moulded square-section balusters, turned newels with ball finials, a pitch pine pulpit with a canted front, and diagonally boarded panels to its base. The pulpit front itself is a Gothic-style arcade carried on squat columns, with semi-circular arched openings having trefoil heads. Six-panel doors on either side provide access to a rear vestry. The main chapel incorporates a pine boarded dado and a plaster ceiling with a moulded cornice, ceiled at collar, and inset octagonal ventilators with radiating pierced grilles. The east gallery incorporates attractive patterned glass in a rose window, and the chapel houses an organ dating from around 1900, constructed by Blackett and Howden.