Robert Hall Memorial Baptist Church

Details

718/0/10222 NARBOROUGH ROAD 11-SEP-06 Robert Hall Memorial Baptist Church

GV II Church including attached church hall and offices, etc. 1900-1 and by Walter Brand of Leicester. It is built of red brick with decorative details in darker red moulded brick or terracotta and has clay tile roofs with coped gables and kneelers. It is in the late Perpendicular or Tudor style with many windows with hood moulds but also with some Art Nouveau detailing.

PLAN: Church on corner of Narborough Road and Upperton Road with tall tower on the corner itself, then church hall to left facing Narborough Road and church offices behind some fronting Upperton Road.

EXTERIOR: The square tower has a door to Narborough Road with a tall arched window over, then an octagonal top with louvred bell-chamber openings with a battlemented parapet and lead covered spirelet. To left is the slightly projecting main entrance porch with stepped buttresses and angle buttresses and parapet, entrance door with moulded terracotta panel over and 2 single-light windows to sides. The main church gable is set-back above and has tall mullion and transom windows with tracery and disposed single-light, 3-light and single-light. Another panel of moulded terracotta in the gable apex. To the left projects a 2-storey porch element with door and 3-light windows. The walls facing the narrow space between the church and church hall are carefully detailed as the rest and at the end is another entrance. To the left of this is the front of the hall with a late C20 porch, 2 windows to left, and 3 basket-arched windows over disposed 2:3:2 lights. The left side of the hall has 5 tall arched windows between narrow buttresses. Simpler office ranges to rear. The front to Upperton Road has the tower on the left with a 2-light window and an arched 2-light over, then 3 4-light mullion and transom windows on both 2 storeys, then a gabled projection with a 3-light window with an arched one over. Next to right is a canted 2-storey porch projection with a double-leaved door and single-lights to either side and a 3-light with similar single-lights over. To far right is a canted bay window with a 3-light over. The right-hand end, facing the car park, is much simpler but has the many gables, hipped and half-hipped roofs of the rear of the church, church hall and other offices and various ridge and end stacks.

INTERIOR: The church interior has exposed brickwork and a wide barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling supported on curved braces rising from corbels. There is a horseshoe-shaped gallery supported on clustered iron piers. The front of this is part-panelled and part-openwork with Art Nouveau detailing. The curve of the gallery at the 'west' end with the rows of seating above also curving is impressive. All the original seating survives here and mostly all in the area below. The 'east' end has a large organ recess with organ and organ loft detailing in the same style. Below is the panelling behind the communion table. The central pulpit has gone but otherwise the church interior is little-altered and all the windows retain rectangular leaded quarries with coloured and stained glass decorative roundels, cartouches and other details in Art Nouveau style. The church hall has a beamed ceiling and balconies at either end, that to the entrance end filled-in but with the stained glass surviving in the windows beyond. Ornamental coloured glass also in the window of the Minister's office. Decorative ironwork on staircases and some fireplaces also survive as does the original white-tiled baptistry under the organ gallery with low double doorway and steps to a rear corridor.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This church including attached church hall and offices, etc.was erected in 1900-1 and designed by Walter Brand of Leicester. Walter Brand, 1873 -1958, commenced his own practice in 1897 and was practising in Bishop St. in Leicester in 1898. He was successful in a competition for the Wholesale Market, Leicester and his work included houses in Ipswich and Felixstowe.

The church is built of red brick in the late Perpendicular or Tudor style but also with some Art Nouveau detailing.

The church interior with its wide barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling and horseshoe-shaped gallery supported on clustered iron piers, is impressive. The front of this is part-panelled and part-openwork with Art Nouveau detailing.The central pulpit has gone but otherwise the church interior is little-altered and all the windows retain rectangular leaded quarries with coloured and stained glass decorative roundels, cartouches and other details in Art Nouveau style. Almost all the original seating survives and the 'east' end has a large organ recess with organ and organ loft detailing, also in the Art Nouveau style. Other interior features survive as well as the original baptistry.

The whole ensemble of this church, church hall and ancillary offices is a carefully articulated composition which is remarkably complete. Both the architecture and the fittings have good quality details. The ensemble also forms a significant group in this part of Narborough Road with the former school building opposite, Leicester South Fields College (q.v.), which was built at the same time as this church. It thus fulfills the criteria for listing buildings of this date and should be listed at Grade ll.

SOURCES: Brown, Haward, Kindred, Dictionary of Suffolk Buildings 1800-1914, 1991.

Legacy

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492602

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LBS

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