Whitefield Chapel (Presbyterian)

Whitefield Chapel (Presbyterian)

Built of roughly dressed grey sandstone laid in irregular courses with Bath stone ashlar dressings and a natural slate roof with tile ridge, this large Tudor Gothic Revival chapel incorporates good Arts and Crafts features. Its style is similar to the work of W Beddoe Rees, a well-known chapel architect.

The west street front is dominated by a large gable and, to the left, a substantial diagonally buttressed three-stage tower. The tower features a broad pointed arched doorway with drip-mould and decorative stops, five trefoil-headed overlights, and boarded double doors with Art Nouveau handles. The middle stage contains a tall loop window rising from an ashlar string course. Above this, a well-designed Arts and Crafts belfry displays a broad three-light bell opening with cambered head and stepped and chamfered cill. Diagonal buttresses terminate at the angles of the belfry in panelled gablets. The parapet is flamboyantly curved and indented, topped by a hexagonal spire with collared copper finial.

To the right of the tower rises a big gable-front to the chapel, crowned by three stylised finials in the Arts and Crafts idiom with shafts running down through the coping into the wall of the upper gable. Below this is a large late-Perpendicular-style window with six trefoiled lights arranged in pairs and curvilinear tracery incorporating Art Nouveau touches, with a hood-mould featuring label-stops. At ground level is a camber-headed four-light window with trefoil tracery. A buttressed porch to the right has an entrance doorway similar to the tower but with a canopy, and a porch parapet pierced with trefoils.

The side elevations contain trefoil-headed windows with two-light tracery, separated by tall battered buttresses. Low gabled transepts feature three-light windows with Perpendicular tracery.

Attached to the east end, beyond the vestry, is the schoolroom with big four-light mullion and transom windows in the gable-ends. These have nine fixed panes above the transom and six-over-fifteen-paned horned sashes below.

The interior features small entrance lobbies with moulded cornice and stylish Art Nouveau wall lamps. Six-panel double doors give access to the chapel, with the upper two panels glazed (three-light each) and the lower panels diagonally boarded.

The main chapel contains a handsome and complex six-bay hammer-beam roof carried on stone corbels faced with shields. Both upper and lower collars are arch-braced, with the upper collar also supported by an octagonal crown post. The hammer-posts continue downwards as pendants, while the gable-end hammer-beams are decorated with cherubs. Panels beside the hammer-posts have pierced decoration of lancets and lobed trefoils. A boarded ceiling features square patterned ventilators, and wind-braced purlins appear in the transept bay.

The pews have close-boarded backs and shaped ends, with a centre block and aisle blocks on each side. The balustrade of the great seat enclosure has curved ends and narrow trefoil-headed panels. A high pulpit, raised on shaped angle supports, has a curved top rail with stairs on each side. The pulpit is canted with pierced Gothic-tracery panels, and behind it a full-height Gothic arch encloses the organ gallery. Below the gallery is a glazed screen with doors to the left and right opening to the vestry. The transepts have low Gothic arches.