Description

PLYMOUTH

SX4855 NORTH HILL, Plymouth 740-1/43/387 (West side) 18/11/91 Sherwell Church and associated buildings including Shelly Hall

GV II*

Congregational church. 1864 by Aycliffe and Paul of Manchester. Dressed and coursed Plymouth limestone with ashlar dressings of lighter colour; plain tile roof with chamfered stone coped gables. STYLE: Middle Pointed. PLAN: hall church with galleries to 3 sides; transepts at W (ritual E) end; 2-storey porch to S of E end and tower to N of E end; hall/sunday school to north of church and caretaker's cottage. EXTERIOR: 2-storey elevations; all walls have ashlar banding, polychrome voussoirs to openings and delicate early Decorated style tracery to the windows. Gabled E entrance front has 5-light window set above 3-bay entrance flanked by offset corner buttresses; foliate stops to hoodmoulds over pointed arches set on marble shafts with foliate capitals. Central doorway has quatrefoil set in tympanum over trumeau and is flanked by trefoil-headed lancets with quatrefoil tracery. This central gable is flanked by slightly set-back outshuts fronted by a 2-storey porch with pyramidal roof on the left and a tall (135 foot) tower with stone spire on the right. These are fronted by slender turrets with angle roofs behind parapets and with flanking lean-tos behind parapets; 2 cusped windows to each turret and cusped lancet to front of each lean-to. The porch tower has weathering dividing the 2 stages and traceried single-light window to upper stage with entablature and bracketed cornice. 3-stage main tower has offset buttresses; paired traceried lights to 2nd stage and louvred 2-light traceried windows to upper stage. The fine 2-tier spire has lucarnes and a turned finial and the spire is set over an entablature with brackets and symbols of the Four Evangelists. S elevation is 1:4:1 bays: buttressed gabled transept on the left with 4-light window over pair of 2-light windows; buttressed aisle right of this with 2-light windows over pairs of lancets, and porch on right with 2-light window over pointed-arched doorway with trefoil to tympanum. Gable-end buttressed front of hall has gable trefoil over 3-light window over gabled porch with corner buttresses and segmental arched doorway.

Taller Sunday school gable end behind has central quatrefoil. The roof is surmounted by a steep pyramidal ventilator with timber trefoil-headed arches framing louvred openings. Side walls have plain pointed-arched transomed windows. A tall chateau-style roof crowns the tall stair tower which dominates the angle where the schoolroom meets the church. Other elevations have detail of similar quality, all the windows have leaded glass and the doorways have their original planked doors. INTERIOR: not inspected but noted as having paired cast-iron columns to galleries and C19 stained glass. This fine church was noted by contemporaries to be the first example of a West Country church to be built in the Gothic style. The building is richly detailed and competently handled by a well-known Manchester firm. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989-: 647 & 648).

Listing NGR: SX4811355044

External Links

• Wikidata Q17554512

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Recommended Books

• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)