Presbyterian Church (including forecourt walls and railings)

Cadw's description

Location

Situated on the W side of Castle Street. The church is set within its own enclosure surrounded by a low sandstone wall surmounted by cast-iron railings.

History

Designed by T.M. Lockwood, architect of Chester, and built in 1865. The building was instigated by the Rev. Ebenezer Powell who opened the Academy School.

Exterior

Gothic Revival style with bar tracery. Sandstone blocks of irregular sizes laid in courses with slate roof. Gable end facing street has central gabled entrance porch, ordered stone door surround with carved foliated capitals, wooden door. Stone belfry to left with decorated stone buttresses. Windows throughout of Early English, `First Pointed' style with quatrefoil and cinquefoil detail. To rear adjoining school room, sandstone block construction with simple lancet windows. Late C20 single storey flat roofed extension to rear.

Interior

There is a fairly complete contemporary scheme. Arch-braced roof timbers rise from painted stone corbels; there is a decorative timber frieze. 4 and 5 pointed star shapes are motifs which are carried through from the glass in the tracery to pierced designs in the roof joinery and incised shapes on the pew ends. Where the windows are paired they are separated by stone shafts with foliated capitals. At the liturgical W end there is a pitch pine lobby with blind cusped arcading. At the liturgical E end is a central pulpit of similar character with steps up on each side with arcaded balustrading. A door on each side leads off to a schoolroom. Windows have coloured and painted glass in the tracery but are otherwise plain with coloured glass margins. Pews are of pitch pine with painted numbers. On the liturgical E wall are 3 later C19 monuments in Neoclassical style commemorating former ministers and elders of the church; two of them are by Mossford of Overton. The schoolroom has exposed timbers in the roof.

Reason for designation

Listed as a good example of Presbyterian church architecture by a noted architect containing a good contemporary interior scheme.