United Reformed Church (EHER 19770)

Congregational chapel. Built in 1811 by William Biggs to replace a meeting house of 1694, and altered 1888.

Monument description derived from merging EHER 19770 and 26826. Original HER entry merged with NRHE data import: A Meeting House was erected in 1694 in Abbey Lane. This was demolished in 1811 and construction began of the current church. In 1861 the school-room and class-rooms were added. <1> Congregational chapel. Built in 1811 by William Biggs to replace a meeting house of 1694, and altered 1888. Red brick, random burnt headers, stucco front lined for ashlar, slate roofs. 3x3 bays, single storey, hipped roofed vestry to East. West front has open modillion pediment with anthemion at apex, centre bay recessed under moulded round arch, side bays with windows set in segmental arched recesses. Tetrastyle Ionic porch with modillion cornice. The former meeting house was a square, timber-framed building with rendered walls and a double-hipped tiled roof with central valley. It had a central entrance and a round-arched window above under a narrow pediment. <2> 2005. Trial trenching. Two trial trenches located in the areas to be impacted by proposed development. The two Trenches (1 and 2) were positioned within the footprints of the proposed building extensions to the Salvation Army Hall at the rear of the United Reform Church, Abbey Lane. Trench 1 covered an area of 9.1 sqm and Trench 2, 7.8 sqm. The evaluation exposed multiple earth-filled graves of a standard size, around 0.5m wide by 1.83m (6 feet) deep cutting a substantial thickness of made-ground across the site. The majority of the earth-filled graves were present to depths of about 2m below current ground surface levels. Two brick-built vaults were also exposed one 0.5m below the surface the other at the base of a deep earth filled grave some about 4m in depth. The limit of the made-ground was defined within Trench 1 at a depth of 1.9m below the turf level. This sealed a ground surface/cultivation horizon that contained Roman material which sat above the alluvial silts deposited on the Slade valley slope. No significant features denoting activity pre-dating the graves were revealed within the scope of this investigation, despite close proximity to the Roman, Saxon and Medieval site at Gibson Way. <3> See also: <4>