Description

SJ 78 NE ALTRINCHAM BOWDON ROAD
(south-west side)

7/1 Bowdon Downs
Church, schoolroom
and lecture hall
(formerly listed
as Bowdon Downs
Congregational
24.10.74 Church With attached buildings
including School and Lecture
- II Hall)

Congregational chapel now Pentecostal church. 1847,
transepts and galleries added 1868, lecture hall added 1882,
porch added c.1920. Dressed sandstone and Westmorland slate
roof. Wide nave with (ritual) north, south and west
porches, west gallery, transepts each with gallery,
schoolroom and vestry. The lecture hall and ancillary rooms
extended along Bowdon Road. Elaborate west porch with
pointed doorway and gable. Above is a 5-light Perpendicular
style window under enriched ogee dripmould flanked by small
canopied empty statue niches and a coped gable with ornate
finial. 6-bay nave with plinth, moulded eaves and steep
roof. Each bay has gableted weathered buttesses and 2-light
window. Porch in bay 2. Transepts which are as high as the
nave are treated similarly to the east end with 2 2-light
windows on the lower level, a rose window in an enriched
arched surround at the higher level and coped gables with
kneelers incorporating grotesque beasts. The lecture hall
etc. is of 8 bays, 1 storey and is picturesquely composed
with 3 coped gables, a chimney stack with 3 octagonal
shafts, weathered buttresses, cusped windows and a tall
fleche to the lecture hall roof. Interior: west doors with
iron daisy motif lattice. Traceried timber screens. 2-bay
transepts with coupled intermediate columns with foliated
heads. Arch-braced hammer beam roof. Carved frieze behind
central octagonal stone pulpit designed for, but rejected by
Queen Victoria. Marble statue of Mary and Martha in memory
of Jesse Haworth 1930. Good stained glass throughout
including lecture hall.

Listing NGR: SJ7622187373

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26639130

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

• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)