Building record HLM 049 - Church Meeting Room, Ipswich Road

Red-brick and pantiled meeting room of St Mary’s Church. The meeting room was built as a Sunday School and was labelled as such on the Ordnance Survey of 1903 but was not depicted on that of 1883 and can be dated in consequence to circa 1890. It consists of a single, spacious hall entered by an integral porch in the middle of its southern gable, and survives in largely original condition apart from a small flat-roofed kitchen and WC added in the late-20th century and the apparent replacement of its window frames at the same time. The interior retains its original fireplace, coat hooks, cast-iron ventilators, boarded floor and wainscot panelling, but the structure’s principal historic interest lies in its Victorian Mock Gothic architectural style. The rafters of the clasped-purlin roof in the hall are stained and fully exposed, as are those of the porch which preserves fragments of glazed tiles similar to those found in many local churches, and its various gables are capped by large wooden finials including that of a large bay window facing the road (S1).