Former Edgworth Methodist Church including boundary wall, gates and piers

Summary

A Methodist church of 1863 by John Walsh Best, Early English Gothic style.

Reasons for Designation

The former Edgworth Methodist Church, a Methodist church of 1863, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a good example of sensitive Gothic design, enhanced by extensive good quality organic and figurative carvings and a variety of mouldings;
* for its good quality fixtures, in particular, the arcaded pulpit and the two triple windows by Henry Holiday.

Group value:

* it has a strong functional, contextual and historical relationship with the nearby Sunday school of 1828, which was the predecessor chapel.

History

After the first Methodist minister came to the area in 1793, worship took place in local houses until the first chapel was built in 1828 (NHLE entry 1241555). By the early 1860s, it was proposed to build a new chapel, and convert the existing one to a Sunday school.

The foundation stone of the new chapel was laid on 21 June 1862 by the principal donor, James Barlow (1821-1887), of Greenthorne (NHLE entry 1241931), who was later Mayor of Bolton and a considerable philanthropist locally. The dedication took place on 25 July 1863. The building cost around £3,000. It was designed by John Walsh Best of Bolton (born 1835), who was living in Edgworth at the time.

The decorative window in the north wall by Edmonson and Son was originally the east window and is dated 1863. The current east window dates from around 1890, and the south window 1895, and these are by Henry Holiday. The oak reredos was designed by Robert K Wolff and installed in 1935.

In the early 1990s, the original cast-iron and timber gallery and the narthex and vestibule beneath it were removed and replaced with a steel structure, walled off from the nave and decorated with the original balcony front. Modern interiors were installed in the enlarged narthex this created. The original pews were also removed from the nave. Early in the C21, the plaster was removed from the east wall. The church closed for worship in January 2022.

Henry Holiday (1839-1927) was an artist at the heart of the Arts and Crafts movement, being a founder member of The Fifteen, the Art Workers' Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. In a career devoted primarily to applied decorative art, he exhibited paintings and sculptures at the Royal Academy and became an influential force in British stained glass, rejecting medievalism in favour of modern aesthetic design. His work is featured in many churches. He also designed murals for Worcester College chapel, Oxford and for Bradford and Rochdale Town Halls, and illustrated Lewis Carroll's 'Hunting of the Snark'. Commissions following an 1890 trip to the USA and Canada included the Robert E Lee memorial in St Paul's, Richmond (Virginia) and the windows of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Manhattan.

Details

A Methodist church of 1863 by John Walsh Best, Early English Gothic style.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone, gritstone, Peterhead granite, Welsh slate.

PLAN: prominently sited on a hillside with a polygonal apse to a wide, aisle-less nave, with north-west tower and north-east vestry.

EXTERIOR: the walls are of narrow-coursed, rock-faced stone with ashlar quoins and dressings, and the roof is of blue slate with polygonal bands. The chancel is a shallow, polygonal apse, with a stepped three-lancet window. To the right, the vestry breaks forward, with a small lavatory clasping the east wall.

The north and south walls are of four bays plus a narthex, with stepped buttresses between, shaped gutter corbels (of several different designs) and a stepped string course. Each window is a stepped triple lancet, below a pointed arch with drip-mould and stops (a mix of heads, fruit and foliage). The vestry has a similar five-light window with straight-pointed heads.

The tower is of three stages with stepped, sloping, set-back buttresses, plate-tracery windows and a west doorway with stopped hoodmould and extravagant hinges. The broach spire is banded. The west doorway, approached by four steps, is flanked by cusped lancets and has dogtooth decoration and paired columns with richly-carved capitals of (l) roses and (r) oak and ivy. Between the columns are carved nesting birds. The doors have decorative hinges. The window above is a stepped triplet of paired lights with slender-column mullions with similar capitals, and trefoils in the tympana. Gallery-stair windows to either side have similar columns as jambs.

INTERIOR: the apsidal chancel is rib-vaulted with floral bosses and capitals to the columns flanking the windows and the granite colonnettes supporting the chancel arch. The east window by Holiday is of Faith, Hope and Love, with a representation of Faith thought to be unique, and grisaille work below and angels above. It is dedicated to James and Alice Barlow, by their children. The oak-panelled reredos memorial is inscribed: ‘TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE BARLOW FAMILY/ WHO FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS HAVE RENDERED/ TO THIS CHURCH SUCH FAITHFUL DEVOTED AND GENEROUS SERVICE.’ The altar rail is original, with floral ironwork which is Art Nouveau in character.

The pulpit is low but ornate with arcading and an exuberant newel finial. The ceiling is boarded above the truss collars. The windows, including the west window now enclosed in the gallery, are attractively and delicately leaded with textured panes of pink, green and yellow glass; the north side has the highly-coloured former east window with scenes of children (it is dedicated to deceased children of James and Alice Barlow), and the south side has a Holiday triple window depicting the good shepherd, the sower and the lost piece of silver, with more grisaille.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the boundary wall to Bolton Road is similar to the walling of the church, with shaped copings, short piers and topped with a rail, and with gates and piers at the entrance.

Sources

Books and journals
Hartwell, C, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Lancashire North, (2009), 674

Websites
Information on John Walsh Best, accessed 30/05/2022 from https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/architects/john-walsh-best
Information on John Walsh Best, accessed 30/05/2022 from https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/additions-alterations-to-wesleyan-chapel-at-eccles

Other
unpublished history of Edgworth Methodist Church by Margaret Higson, 1993, retained in the church archives
'Dedication of the Wesleyan new chapel at Edgworth’, Bolton Chronicle 25 July 1863, p5.

End of official list entry

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