Description

LANCASTER

SD4761NE ST LEONARD'S GATE
1685-1/7/283 (North side)
Centenary Church

GV II

Former Congregational church, now vacant. 1879-81. By JC
Hetherington and GD Oliver of Carlisle in a free Early English
style. Rock-faced and coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings,
and slate roofs with coped gables and red clay ridge tiles.
6-bay nave with high galleried aisles under a single roof, and
a south-west tower with a spire on the corner of Rosemary
Lane.
The gabled entrance front on St Leonardgate has 3 wide lancet
windows under gabled and crocketed hoodmoulds, above which is
a rose window of plate tracery, a cinquefoil surrounded by 8
circles, also under a crocketed hoodmould. To the left and
right are round-headed entrance doorways, of 2 orders with
shafts; the boarded doors have elaborate wrought-iron hinges.
Above the left-hand doorway is the tower. Above the right-hand
doorway the gallery windows are a triplet of stepped lancets
under a transept-like roof.
The side facade to Rosemary Lane has 2 storeys and 5 bays,
arranged symmetrically. In both storeys each bay has a pair of
round-headed lancets under linked hoodmoulds, but on the upper
storey in the second and fourth bays these lancets are topped
by a circular window and placed under a gable.
The tower is square and has 3 stages; its rock-faced stone
faces have a pair of lancet windows in each stage and are
slightly recessed between ashlar pilaster strips which carry a
corbelled parapet with octagonal corner turrets with
spirelets. The upper stage contains both the ringers' chamber
and the belfry, and its paired lancets are glazed below and
provided with louvres at the top; above them are 3 circular
openings under semi-octagonal hoodmoulds. The tower carries an
octagonal broach spire with, low down, 8 linked lucarnes, each
with a circular opening under a gabled hoodmould and towards
the top, gablets on the cardinal faces above a narrow band of
two tiers of semicircles.
HISTORY: built to celebrate the centenary of the Independent
Chapel (now Trinity United Reformed Church) on High Street
(qv).

Listing NGR: SD4782161830

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26577080

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)