The Wesley Hall in Crookes

 

A detail of the Wesley Hall in Crookes

Still in week 50 of the COVID-19 Pandemic, with the weather holding for a few days, my next investigation was undertaken in Crookes, a part of Sheffield that I had very briefly explored when looking at houses to buy with an old girlfriend 35 years ago. 

 

A general view of the Wesley Hall in Crookes

We ended up living in High Green, but more recently I went to a street market – when I was particularly interested in the Wesley Hall (1908), which I had seen from the top deck of the No. 52 bus and walked back to have another look.

The Carson Road elevation

After undertaking some online research and discovering that the architect WJ Hale (1862–1929) - who I had never heard of before - had designed this and other Methodist churches in Crookes, as well as the Bolehill primary school in nearby Walkley, I decided to investigate further.

 

A weathered rose and floral details

The Wesley Hall is built in an Arts and Crafts version of the Perpendicular Gothic style, with the main body having an octagonal plan and large square angled buttresses. Although it has a very solid, castle like appearance, there are numerous flourishes of floral detail at high level and the limited amount of tracery has an unusual design.

 

An example of window tracery

The front porch is also ornate, with the wide moulded arch to the entrance having carved foliage and the parapet above has a row of mask corbels, which are in the form of the heads of cherubs.

 

The porch

The walling of the church is built in a light brown medium grained sandstone, which has a distinctly planar stratification and a limited bed height that I assume was quarried from the Crawshaw Sandstone at the nearby Bolehills, but the quoins and dressings are massive sandstone – possibly from the Ashover Grit in Derbyshire. 

 

A detail of the mask corbel