Description

ILFRACOMBE

SS5147 HIGH STREET 853-1/6/156 (North side) The Lantern, including former Sunday School, front wall and railings

II

Formerly known as: United Reformed Church including Sunday School, front wall and railings HIGH STREET. Community centre, formerly church (Congregational) and former Sunday School. Church 1818, re-modelled, and probably re-fronted, in early 1880s; Sunday school rebuilt by WH Gould of Ilfracombe in 1884. MATERIALS: local greenish, New Road stone rubble; the church front and right-hand side-wall with details in white and red (Mansfield) dressed stone, cast-iron and polished granite. Left side wall and rear wall of church with details in yellowish dressed stone (probably Bath stone) and some red brick; rear end of side wall and whole of rear wall hung with old local slates having an irregular, silvery surface. Front of Sunday School in white and red dressed stone as the church. Slated roofs. EXTERIOR: Fronts of former church and Sunday School in Italian Gothic Style, including the front side-walls of the church; remainder in English Decorated style. Church has 2-stage gabled front with ornately carved stringcourse between the white voussoirs. Lower stage has centre doorway flanked by triple openings containing a doorway and 2 windows. Centre doorway flanked by paired granite columns with round cinquefoil window in the head of the arch; triple openings separated by paired cast-iron columns. Doors have small square panels, the upper panels in the centre doors with decorative ironwork, those in the outer doors with coloured glass. Upper stage has 2 middle windows themselves having a round cusped window above, the whole set in a shallow recess with pointed arch and flanked granite columns. All windows have coloured glass. Right-hand side-wall similar, but plainer. Front left-hand side wall even plainer, with traceried window in the upper stage, but in the lower stage a triple pointed arch of brick, evidently infilling an earlier opening. Rear of left side-wall has 3-light windows with pointed arches and cusped, interlacing tracery in the lower stage; flat-headed 2-light windows with ogee-headed lights above. In the gable, a large window containing 5 round cusped lights. Former Sunday School (set well back to right) has a flat-headed chamfered doorway in centre inscribed CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL and with A.D. 1884 at either side. Pointed, single-light flanking windows; 3-light window with pointed arch above, the lights with pointed heads and having a large, round cinquefoiled light above. INTERIOR with panelled and bracketed pine gallery at west end, extending to either side, on cast-iron clustered columns. Queen post roof with arched braces. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: along the street frontage is a low stone wall with decorated iron railing on top. In the centre a pair of similar iron gates flanked by gate piers of alternating red and white stone, these being topped by massive stone caps in Gothic style. Ornate iron overthrow lampholder and lamp.

Listing NGR: SS5163147542

External Links

• Wikidata Q26503793

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