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Description: The Unitarian Church

Address: Unitarian Church Honey Hole Road Todmorden Calderdale OL14 6LE

Grade: I

Group detail: Honey Hole Road

Full description:
(formerly listed as Unitarian Church, Bankside) Church. 1865 to 1869 by John Gibson for Samuel, John and Joshua Fielden. The alignment of the church does not correspond to the elaborate Gothic employed. Nave and aisles, transepts and chancel, porch to ritual west end and large tower and spire attached to 6th bay of nave (on ritual south side) covering another entrance. Pitch faced stone with ashlar dressings, slate roof. 7-bay nave with 2-light windows with traceried heads. Set back buttresses and string with carved heads and flowers. Straight parapet. Ritual west end has elaborate rose window in gable above enclosed rectangular porch. This has deeply moulded doorway in its 3 sides. Beyond the nave, but in the line with its walls are the gabled transept facades each of 2 bays, with taller 2-light windows and spherical triangle above. The very short one bay chancel has a large 5-light window in its end wall. 3-stage tower with angle buttresses and 2-light belfry windows. Octagonal stone spire connected by flyers to the pinnacles and with tall lucarnes in the principal faces. The bottom stage forms an open porch with a palm vault with banded webbing. Tall doorway with deeply moulded arch surrounding door and cusped mandorla with stained glass. The church was prominently sited to form a landmark visible from Dobroyd Castle (q.v.) Interior: 7-bay nave with pointed arches carried on Devonshire marble columns to arcade to aisles. Brattished rail, hammer-beam roof truss carried on marble collonnetes. Aisles have similar arched-braced roof. Chancel arch carried on coupled marble collonettes. Chancel has banded stone arched roof of 3 bays. Open arcades to chapels, now used as vestry and organ chamber, have fine lierne vaulted roofs with banded stone enriched with carved bosses at junction of ribs. All capitals are enriched with foliage carving. Furnishings: Choir stalls and pews original with fine carved poppy heads and plate tracery. Pulpit similarly carved carried on collonnettes of differing coloured marbles. Font has similar base with carved white marble bowl. Chancel window of stained glass by J B Capronnier (Brussels, 1868) of Scenes of the Life of Christ. Memorial tablets in aisle to the founders. Aisles also retain original decorative gas brackets (converted to electricity) and also candelabras to choir stalls. The lavish decorative scheme remains intact "This church survives complete as one of the most elaborate Non conformist churches to adopt the style and arrangements of the Established Church during the High Gothic Revival. Ken Powell, The Fall of Zion (SAVE Britain's Heritage, 1980) unpaginated". N. Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding, (London, 1979), p.521.