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

• Wikidata Q26639130

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  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)