Description

SUNDERLAND

NZ3956NE STOCKTON ROAD 920-1/20/212 (East side) 10/11/78 West Park United Reformed Church (Formerly Listed as: COWAN TERRACE (South side) West Park United Reformed Church)

GV II

Congregational church, now United Reformed Church. 1881-83. By JP Pritchett. Coursed rock-faced stone with ashlar plinth and dressings and red granite shafts; graduated Lakeland slate roof with stone gable copings. E apsed chancel with schoolrooms in 2-storey ambulatory; double transepts; aisled nave; NW tower and SW porch with half-octagonal stair turret projections. Late C14 style with geometric tracery. EXTERIOR: steps up to W door, with tendril cast-iron hinges and cross scutcheons, recessed in gabled projection between nook-shafts in deep arch with dripmould above, and inner rib-moulding resting on crocket capitals of intermediate shafts. Crocketed gable over door; small windows at sides. Similar treatment to smaller doors in flanking tower at left and porch at right. Tall 5-light W window. 5-stage tower has paired cusped lancets in second stage, 2-light third stage window, clock in fourth, paired belfry openings in fifth with nook-shafts and plate tracery; ashlar spire has 4 bands of fish-scale patter, 2 levels of lucarnes, tall corner spirelets. 2-light aisle windows and 3-light paired transept windows on 2 levels, the lower cusped lights and the upper cusped with tracery. 2 long windows to school stairs in `ambulatory' which has paired cusped lights on 2 levels. Polygonal hipped ambulatory roof from which rises steeply-pitched hipped chancel roof with cusped tracery in big 2-light gabled lucarnes; paired gables on transepts; steeply-pitched nave roof; pent stair turret roofs against tower and porch. INTERIOR shows meeting rooms and school rooms in ambulatory have much original Gothic-style detail, including cast-iron piers with octagonal base and fluted capital, stair balustrade with twisted cast-iron balusters, 6-panelled doors including pierced door to kitchen, dumb waiter, chimney-pieces, boarded dado with wall bench, original heating system vents, levers and vanes; upper central meeting room with hammer beam roof to lucarnes. Chapel interior shows 5-light W window behind fine Renaissance-style organ by Nelson & Co., Durham; high W roll-moulded arch with inner arch on corbelled shafts. 2 tiers of slender cast-iron piers with crocket capitals support galleries along all 3 sides, the W over entrance vestibules; upper arcades; plinths of upper piers painted with passion flowers and scrolled names of virtues. Boarded hammer beam roof. Deacons' seats below high quality central E pulpit of fine ashlar stone with green marble shafts to blind pierced arcade with much decorative carving in North Italian style; shows some subsidence damage at time of survey. High quality painted glass includes W window scene across all 5 panels, dated 1902, showing Christ in Glory; N transept gallery Sermon on the Mount, and Christ's Charge to Peter and John, signed Atkinson Bros.; N aisle window by J Eadie Reed dated 1926. Also several C19 memorial slabs. (Milburn GE and Miller ST: Sunderland River, Town and People: Sunderland: 1988-: 159).

Listing NGR: NZ3951056518

External Links

• Wikidata Q26502300

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Recommended Books

• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)