Looking at Buildings

, printed from the Looking at Buildings website on Friday 29th March 2024

St Luke's Wesleyan Church

St Luke\'s [1] (1899-1900) makes it stand apart from the great mass of Methodist chapels. Samuel Meggitt Johnson, Chairman of the liquorice allsort manufacturers, George Bassett & Co, covered the £4,000 cost of the chapel and adjacent Sunday school and this generous funding gave Hale greater scope in preparing his designs. He took the PerpendicularGlossary Term [2] style favoured by chapel architects at the beginning of the twentieth century and transformed it into something quite individual. The buttresses that flank the west window rise to form towers each with a pyramidal cap while the archGlossary Term [3] over the window springs straight from them. The way in which the railings reflect motifs used in the porch window lintels and in the carvings on the top of the buttresses is typical of Hale's care in detailing. The church closed in 1985 and has been converted to flats under the name Hale Court.

gableGlossary Term [4] and exquisite imposts on each side of the door depicting the four evangelists as angels.

Last updated: Monday, 26th January 2009