Chancel and Tower. East Street Methodist Church, Lindley

The Wesleyan Methodists established a chapel at Lindley in 1795, rebuilt in 1867. To mark the centenary, in 1895 James Neild Sykes was instrumental in commissioning Edgar Wood to add an Anglican style chancel and tower. Drawings in the Royal Institute of British Architects Library show Wood's plan to extend the East Street Methodist Church in 1895 by adding a chancel.

Wood also designed the Communion Table, exhibited at the Manchester City Art Gallery, in the Manchester Arts and Crafts Exhibition of 1895 (no 723). It include carved inscriptions to the front,"This Do In Remembrance of Me" ( top) A"The Homeless, The Sick, The Ignorant, The Poor" (scroll) and “Faith Hope and Charity”(bottom), with that on the back rail reading, in Memory of Our Sister, Lucy J Sykes Nov 9 1893. [Partnership in Style, page 31]

LISTING TEXT - 1867. Chancel, vestry and  north east  transept designed by Manchester architect Edgar Wood, and built in 1895. Hammer dressed stone. Pitched slate roof. Hall church with  west  transept surmounted by low tower with pyramidal slate roof and finial on  south  side. 6 bay nave. Buttresses,  with gabled tops at west end. 2 storey  west  end, string at eaves level. 1st floor has windows with Geometrical tracery, 4 light to nave, 2 light to tower: oculi above each. Ground floor has central 2 centred door with hood-mould, moulded surround and plate cusps, 2 pointed lancets with Geometrical plate tracery, and 2 blocked doors either side, with segment arched Caernarfon lintels and 2 centred moulded relieving arches with hood-moulds. Aisle windows have transoms and bar tracery.  East  window has late C19th Decorated bar tracery, and, reset, the date stone of the original 1795 church, inscribed (in lettering characteristic of each period)  The Wesleyan Church. Anno Domini 1795. Re erected 1867. Chancel 1895. Edgar Wood had married into the Sykes family of Lindley, whose church this was.

Reference    British Architect xliv 1895 page 44-45 - communion table
Reference    John Archer, Partnership in Style, Catalogue to an exhibition of the works of Wood & Sellers, Manchester City Art Gallery, Oct/Nov 1975. Page 31 and 33 -illustration