York Historic Environment Record

Wesleyan Methodist chapel; schoolrooms and ancillary accommodation at rear. 1840; ancillary buildings 1872 and 1895. Chapel by James Simpson of Leeds.

MATERIALS: chapel front of cream brick in Flemish bond with sandstone ashlar portico; rear and returns of orange-grey mottled brick in English garden-wall bond. Hipped slate roof with brick stack. Wrought-iron overthrow and lamp bracket.

EXTERIOR: basement and 2 storeys; 5-bay pedimented front, articulated 1:3:1 by pilasters behind tetrastyle giant Ionic portico. Entablature to pediment returns on each side across full width of front. Basement window to left is 4-pane sash, to right 16-pane sash. Flights of steps beneath portico lead to three pairs of folding sunk panelled doors with flat arches of gauged brick. Flanking windows are bordered lights in raised architraves over sill bands: upper storey windows are similar. Rear: 2-storey 5-bay apse. Basement windows originally 16-pane sashes with flat arches, some with semicircular grilles. Ground and first floor windows are round-headed bordered lights with brick arches and stone sills, those on first floor taller. Left and right returns repeat fenestration of rear. Rear bay of right return filled by ashlar doorcase with plain jambs, shouldered lintel and dentilled cornice on moulded consoles, beneath parapet with moulded coping: panelled double doors are approached by steps.

INTERIOR: 2 staircases to gallery have open strings, slender turned balusters, shaped treadends and serpentine handrail wreathed around turned newel on shaped curtail steps. Oval gallery on cast-iron Corinthian columns has sunk-panelled front projecting on modillions. Numbered panelled box pews on ground floor and in gallery retain original fittings. Gallery windows in round-arched architraves have coloured glass borders incorporating palmette and rinceaux motifs. Modillioned ceiling cornice is enriched with egg-and-dart mouldings over plaster frieze of rinceaux and rosettes: ceiling is coffered with rosette mouldings in alternate panels. Massive matching pulpit and organ case. Wall monuments: white marble sarcophagus to Joseph Agar, d.1847, signed Waudby; pedimented tabernacle supported by sculpted figures to Rev. David Hill, d.1896, by Skelton of York.

(City of York: RCHME: The Central Area: HMSO: 1981-: 52). Listing NGR: SE6054051896

Derived from English Heritage LB download dated: 22/08/2005

Centenary Methodist Chapel, St. Saviourgate (Plate 66), built to commemorate the first hundred years of Methodism, was completed in 1840. The architect was James Simpson of Leeds. The chapel was designed to accommodate 1,500 people, with vestries and a caretaker's flat in a basement below. Considerable additions at the back of the chapel, providing schoolrooms, etc., were built in 1872 and 1895 to replace similar structures of 1861 and 1864 destroyed by fire.

The walls of the chapel are of common brick, with stone dressings to the S.E. front facing St. Saviourgate. Projecting in the middle of this front is a tetrastyle Ionic portico under a pediment; the entablature is continued to the ends of the elevation over pilasters at the corners. The doorways are plain and there are rectangular windows with moulded architraves above. The two sides and the N.W. end, which is segmental on plan, are of plain brick with round-headed windows in two storeys, with basement windows below. Inside, a gallery supported on cast-iron columns of the Composite order is carried all round, segmentally on plan at each end. The ceiling is divided into square panels, alternate panels being decorated with a rosette. The main floor of the chapel and the gallery are furnished with panelled box-pews. Monument: on N.W. wall, Joseph Agar, 1847, wall-monument with white marble sarcophagus, signed Waudby.

Monument 24; City of York: RCHME: The Central Area: HMSO: 1981-: 52

NMR Information

Full description
(SE 60545188) Centenary Methodist Church (NAT)

1. ST SAVIOURGATE (north-west side) 5343

Centenary Methodist Church

SE 6051 NE 17/253 1.7.68

II*

2. 1839-40. Architect: James Simpson. Two storeyed facade of white brick having 5 windows in moulded stone architraves, 2 doorways with multi-panelled doors and pedimented stone portico on 4 giant Ionic columns; perron with steps up at front and sides; stone sill bands. Good interior with 3-sided gallery. (RCHM Vol V, Monument 24). (2)

Documented. (3)

Sources
1 Ordnance Survey Map. OS 1:2500 1963.
2 List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. p297 City of York, June 1983
3 An inventory of nonconformist chapels and meeting-houses in the north of England 1994 by Christopher Stell p188

613515 Architectural Survey Investigation by RCHME/EH Architectural Survey

BF060233 CENTENARY METHODIST CHAPEL, YORK File of material relating to a site or building. This material has not yet been fully catalogued.
VF000032 Chapels of England Items in this file were created digitally and have not been printed.

RCHME, 1981, City of York Volume V: The Central Area (Monograph). SYO65.

NMR, 2019, NMR data (Digital archive). SYO2214.