Argyle Congregational Chapel

Details

ARGYLE STREET (North side) Argyle Congregational Chapel 12/06/50

GV II

Formerly known as: Argyle Chapel ARGYLE STREET.

Congregational chapel. 1788-9 by Thomas Baldwin, enlarged 1821 by H.E. Goodridge, further altered 1861. MATERIALS: Bath limestone ashlar to front, coursed rubble to rear, Welsh slate roof. PLAN: Rectangular plan with various accretions. EXTERIOR: Three bay front, slightly recessed between Nos.6 and 7 Argyle Street (qv). The front is one:one:one bays with the centre set slightly forward. The ground floor is by Goodridge and dates from 1823. Doorways in plain walling on either side of unfluted Ionic portico in antis, two columns with flanking Doric pilasters. ten-panel doors with the panels recessed, in pylon architraves and with cornice heads on consoles. The portico contains a central tall double door (originally window) in architrave surround, the return walls have doors as front. Plain entablature. First floor is lower and dates from 1862 by Hickes and Isaac. Arched windows with architrave heads and a continuous impost band flank an attached Corinthian order, the outer ones square, the inner ones circular. Cornice with modillions above dentils, partly balustraded parapet over. Side (west) elevation has arched windows over segmental headed ones, lunette in north gable. Various C20 additions. INTERIOR: Not inspected, but Royal Commission for Historic Monuments (RCHM) reports `The interior (18m X 28m X 13.5m) partly refitted in late C19, has a gallery around three sides supported by cast iron columns. Beneath the chapel is a stone vaulted cellar with a late C18 wrought iron gate at the north entrance; it was originally intended to be let for storage. FITTINGS: Include a monument to Rev. William Jay 1863, pastor for 62 years; also an early C19 pulpit which has been altered and lowered but retains an arched front flanked by paired Ionic columns supporting a dentil cornice. HISTORY: This Congregational chapel was founded after a dispute with the Countess of Huntingdon led to a breakaway chapel being established in 1782. A new chapel was commissioned from Baldwin, and opened on 4 October 1789. The Rev. William Jay became minister in 1791 and remained here for 62 years (see bronze plaque). His congregation having greatly expanded, the chapel was first extended by the young Henry Goodridge (one of his earliest commissions), who added a new Greek Revival front (influenced by Wilkins¿ Freemasons¿ Hall in York Street) and extended the interior; very little of the C18 fabric seems to survive. The jubilee celebrations of 1839 led to two granite memorial columns being introduced within. Hickes and Isaac¿s alterations of 1862 heightened the front and considerably compromised the Grecian severity of Goodridge¿s composition, which formerly terminated with an attic storey with pediment above. The original elevation was further embellished with fine iron railings and an overthrow. T.B Silcock carried out further repairs and reroofed the chapel in 1894. Argyle Street, first Argyle Buildings, was the extension of the line of Adam's Pulteney Bridge (qv) into Sir William Pulteney's Bathwick Estate. The estate passed to his daughter, Henrietta Laura in 1792, but building work had already begun on Laura Place in 1788. SOURCES: R.E.M. Peach, Bath: Old and New (1891), 125-28; A.W. Wills, The History of Argyle Congregational Church, Bath (1938); Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bath (2nd ed. 1980), 60-62; Neil Jackson, Nineteenth Century Bath. Architects and Architecture (1991), 52 & 61; Christopher Stell, Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses of South-West England (RCHME 1991), 164. Drawings of both Baldwin¿s original and Goodridge¿s 1821 elevation in Bath Reference Library.

Listing NGR: ST7523765023

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

509546

Legacy System:

LBS

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