History

Designed by T.M. Lockwood, architect of Chester, and built in 1865. The building was instigated by the Rev. Ebenezer Powell who opened the Academy School.

Exterior

Gothic Revival style with bar tracery. Sandstone blocks of irregular sizes laid in courses with slate roof. Gable end facing street has central gabled entrance porch, ordered stone door surround with carved foliated capitals, wooden door. Stone belfry to left with decorated stone buttresses. Windows throughout of Early English, `First Pointed' style with quatrefoil and cinquefoil detail. To rear adjoining school room, sandstone block construction with simple lancet windows. Late C20 single storey flat roofed extension to rear.

Interior

There is a fairly complete contemporary scheme. Arch-braced roof timbers rise from painted stone corbels; there is a decorative timber frieze. 4 and 5 pointed star shapes are motifs which are carried through from the glass in the tracery to pierced designs in the roof joinery and incised shapes on the pew ends. Where the windows are paired they are separated by stone shafts with foliated capitals. At the liturgical W end there is a pitch pine lobby with blind cusped arcading. At the liturgical E end is a central pulpit of similar character with steps up on each side with arcaded balustrading. A door on each side leads off to a schoolroom. Windows have coloured and painted glass in the tracery but are otherwise plain with coloured glass margins. Pews are of pitch pine with painted numbers. On the liturgical E wall are 3 later C19 monuments in Neoclassical style commemorating former ministers and elders of the church; two of them are by Mossford of Overton. The schoolroom has exposed timbers in the roof.

Reasons for Listing

Listed as a good example of Presbyterian church architecture by a noted architect containing a good contemporary interior scheme.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29494578

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

• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings