Summary
Former Congregational Chapel, 1914-1916, by James Totty of Rotherham.
Reasons for Designation
The former Congregational Church, 1914-1916, by James Totty of Rotherham, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* a striking example of a late Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts-style church that retains a complete and coherent scheme;
* as a building which reflects the strong signature style of two well-regarded Yorkshire architects, James Totty and William John Hale, with contributions by a number of known craftsmen such as Frank Tory and Sons of Sheffield;
* for the high-quality craftsmanship in the carved ‘Tree of Life’ motifs and decorative blind tracery;
* for an intact plan form and spatial configuration, with the arrangement of gallery and blocks of raked and curved pews facing towards the pulpit;
* for the retention of carved Austrian oak fixtures and fittings, including the roof timbers, raked and curved pews and galleries, doors, sanctuary screens and organ.
Group value:
* the church benefits from a spatial group value with the listed Devonshire Hotel and Nos 23 and 25 Newmarket Street.
History
Skipton United Reformed and Methodist Church, built between 1914 and 1916, is the third Congregational chapel erected on this site since 1777, with a Sunday School established directly east (erected in 1892, now St Andrew’s Church Hall). The church, south boundary wall and landscaped green and drive were designed by James Totty of Rotherham (1875 - 1951), Yorkshire architect and surveyor, who developed a diverse portfolio of work in South Yorkshire, including a range of First World War memorials and the renovation and construction of Congregational churches at Greasbrough, Kimberworth and Skipton. The designs for Kimberworth (completed 1914, now demolished) and Skipton were near identical and both took direct inspiration from the work of William John (WJ) Hale (1862-1929), such as St Luke’s Wesleyan Hall and Crookes Congregational Church (List entry 1247397) in Sheffield.
The foundation stones at Skipton were laid on 19 September 1914 by four key Congregationalists: John Harrison (a descendent of James Harrison who founded the first Congregational meeting room in Skipton in 1764); Edward Gaunt; Mrs A H Gunnell and Thomas Henry Dewhurst. The latter helped raise £3,800 of the £5,000 cost of works, and the Dewhurst family had considerable influence over the church and wider community. The Dewhursts, cotton spinners and manufacturers, were internationally known for the production of Dewhurst and Son’s ‘Sylko’ sewing thread and, by acquiring other cotton businesses, establishing the English Sewing Cotton Company by the late C19. Thomas Henry Dewhurst opened the new church, which held 600 worshippers and a choir of 50, on Saturday 15 September 1916.
The church plan form has remained unchanged since its first depiction on the fourth edition 1:2500 OS 1946 (surveyed 1938) map. There has been minor alteration to the south boundary wall and landscaped grounds designed by Totty. During the Second World War the wrought iron railings attached to the south parapet wall were removed, and in the mid-C20 the south parapet wall was extended west (following the demolition of neighbouring outbuildings) and the gateway piers dropped by one course. The entrance forecourt, the construction of which had necessitated the disinterment of 24 graves and the relocation of memorial stones to their current arrangement (although the Dewhursts' burial vault was left in situ), was marginally widened in the later C20. In 1972, the Congregational Church of England and Wales merged with the Presbyterian Church of England to form the United Reformed Church, and Skipton voted to join the new denomination in 1975. The same year the Methodist Union also moved to the church and the name St Andrew’s Methodist and United Reformed Church was adopted. The war memorials from Water Street Methodist Church and Gargrave Road Primitive Methodist Church were relocated to the church, including two stained glass panels by Messrs Kayll and Reed from Gargrave Road Methodist Church. In the late C20 the guttering, fall pipes and roof ventilators were replaced. In 2001 the former architectural practice of Wales, Wales and Rawson undertook minor renovations including constructing a main entrance disabled access ramp, plain glazing the panelled two-leaf main entrance doors and inserting six plain glazed arched windows in a blank wall between vestibule and nave. The dais and gallery were sympathetically raised using matching materials and style.
Details
United Reformed Church, 1914-1916, by James Totty of Rotherham. Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts style.
MATERIALS: well-dressed and finely carved Eastburn sandstone and Ancaster limestone. Pitched and hipped Burlington slate roofs. Decorative Austrian oak fixtures and fittings and leaded stained glass windows.
PLAN: a north-south aligned church situated to the rear of a green and drive (accessed from the south). Cruciform on plan, with semi-octagonal south half-turrets, a rectangular north-east sanctuary side-porch and a square north-west vestry block.
EXTERIOR: not inspected, information from other sources. The three-bay two-storey main (south) elevation has an Art Nouveau shaped gable end, with a pitched roof, constructed in squared and snecked sandstone with six ashlar band courses, a plain chamfered plinth, and square angle buttresses rising above the gable and terminating in moulded leaded capstones. The upper buttresses are ashlar and carved with elaborate grapevine motifs, probably by Frank Tory & Sons of Sheffield, representing the ‘Tree of Life’. In the upper gable is a wide central three-light curvilinear stone bar-tracery window with a moulded soffit and quoined ashlar jambs, carved grape and grape-leaf label and corbel stops and substantial stone mullions rising up through the elevation and above the gable to form slender square buttresses, again carved with ‘Tree of Life’ motifs. The apex of the gable has a carved grapevine hip knob above a blind tracery panel. Below the central window is a similar Art Nouveau shaped gable end porch, with matching ‘Tree of Life’ carvings on its square buttresses. The gable end porch panel has blind curvilinear tracery (below a decorative metal finial) and contains a pointed segmental arch door surround, with a moulded soffit, hoodmould and grape-leaf head-stops. The door surround contains a blind seven-panel tracery fan light above a pair of chamfered flat lintel entrances, each entrance with two-leaf wooden tracery panel doors and C21 glazing. A triangular arch window is positioned either side of the porch. Set back from the main elevation are two-storey semi-octagonal half-turrets, with hipped roofs and finials, three ashlar band courses, triangular arched ashlar quoined windows (the upper windows with hoodmould and grape-leaf head-stops) and a projecting side-porch accessed by three steps. The south elevation has a central window on each floor. The return has a simple gable end porch, with undecorated square buttresses, containing a pointed segmental arch ashlar doorway (with grape-leaf hoodmould headstops), a blind three-panel tracery fanlight and two-leaf wooden tracery panel doors. Above the side-porch is a triangular arched window.
All other church elevations are constructed in matching squared and snecked sandstone with a plain chamfered plinth, ashlar band courses and ashlar quoined pointed segmental arch windows of varying stone tracery lights (most windows embellished with grape-leaf head-stops to hoodmoulds). The east and west returns of the five-bay nave have four stepped and capped buttresses and four pointed segmental arch windows with two full height six-light bar-tracery windows to the south and two squat three-light windows to the north above a two-bay transept. The transepts are of two equal pitched roof gables with square buttresses and flat roof coping. Each gable has a three-light window and single bay blind return. Attached to the north end of the nave and transepts is a two-storey, three-bay, pitched roof sanctuary, a split-storey, single-bay, flat roofed north-east porch and a two-storey, two-bay north-west vestry. The sanctuary gable end contains an off-set flat lintel external doorway (leading to the hydraulic organ blower) with a pair of flat-lintel windows to the east and two separate flat-lintel windows to the west. Above, positioned at the east and west end of the elevation are two tall upper windows and in the apex of the gable is a window with ashlar bands running through sill and lintel. The north-east sanctuary porch's north elevation rises from single to two-storeys, each with a central window, and its east elevation contains a porch door with gable end door surround, moulded coping and a blind slit window. The north-west vestry's north elevation has an off-centre external chimney stack and north-east ventilation stack, between which is a narrow flat lintel ground-floor window, with wooden fenestration, and an ashlar and broken quoined triangular arch window offset above. Its two-bay west elevation has a triangular arched voussoir doorway with a wide triangular voussoir arched window to the north. The first floor has two matching windows, the south window narrower than the north.
INTERIOR: the interior was not inspected, with information provided from photographic and other sources.
The entrance vestibule has a terrazzo floor and oak boarded dado, with a pair of stained glass war memorial windows to the south wall; one depicts the figures of two knights and '1914' with the names of nine Fallen servicemen, and the other depicts Christ Risen and '1919' with the names of eight Fallen servicemen. Four pointed segmental arch doorways, with oak tracery panel doors, provide access into the half-turrets and the nave. The east half-turret contains a decorative wooden gallery staircase, and the west a former ground-floor cloak room and a first-floor ancillary room to the gallery. The two doors leading into the nave are set either side of six C21 plain glazed arched windows. The double-height nave has bracketed hammer beam roof trusses and moulded stone corbels supporting an oak boarded ceiling. A string course runs around the windows with an oak boarded dado beneath. The windows contain leaded lights with Arts and Crafts stained glass motif windows by William Gamon & Co of Chester (these are present throughout the church). A substantial quantity of warmly coloured Austrian oak fixtures and fittings remain in situ. A rear gallery has steeply raked oak seating behind a slightly concave oak tracery panelled parapet resting on cast iron columns by Macfarlane’s Saracen Foundry in Glasgow. Below the gallery are three blocks of moderately raked and slightly curved oak pews, and a further block of straight and steeply curved pews are arranged between nave and transepts. Each transept is a two-bay arcade of pointed segmental arches (with hood-mould), with an oak blocked floor by the Yorkshire Wood Block Flooring Co of Leeds. The sanctuary wall has two string courses and a wide full height moulded arch, with half-moulded octagonal abacus and grape-leaf corbels. A two-step dais set in front of the arch accommodates the pulpit (displaced west), communion furniture and chancel and choir screens, all decorated with curvilinear tracery and square stopped panelling. Steeply raked choir stalls rise up to a panelled three-manual organ (set at gallery level) built in 1902 by Abbot and Smith of Leeds for the former chapel, and extended in 1916 by Laycock and Bannister of Keighley in a widened case designed by James Totty. Punctured either side of the sanctuary arch is a pointed segmental arch gallery, containing oak tracery screens. Below is a pointed segmental arch doorway, with oak tracery panel door. The east door gives access to the sanctuary side-porch entrance, with cloak room and lavatories. The west door gives access to the two-storey vestry. The vestry hallway has an external west door, two east doors into a store and lavatories, a ground floor Minster’s vestry and lavatory and a wooden staircase (set above a safe) leading to the Choir’s vestry. Both vestry rooms are said to contain original fixtures and fittings: fireplaces, music cupboards and pigeon holes. The hydraulic organ blower room is accessed externally.
The nave contains war memorials: the Congregational Church's carved oak and brass plaque, Water Street Methodist Church's engraved brass plaque and Gargrave Road Primitive Methodist Church's 'pictus certus' mosaic marble tablet with marble frame. There is also a memorial to John Thomas Dawson, the half-brother of William Harbutt Dawson (noted historian and advisor to Lloyd George) who was a strong supporter of the church.
SUBSIDIARY ITEM: the low parapet wall and gateposts of the church's south boundary wall; a wrought iron gate attached to the vestry and a short section of low parapet wall with wrought iron railings attached to east side of the sanctuary were part of the C20 design by James Totty. The south boundary wall retains four boundary wall piers, two of which form the entrance way. Each square pier has a square buttress at each corner rising above a domed capstone. Its north and south faces are decorated with a blind tracery panel below a moulded string of plain and egg and foliate carving. The entrance gate piers have been repositioned and dropped in height with the loss of the parapet railings.
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 7 September to reformat text to current standards
