Monument record 4473/2/0 - Bethesda Chapel, High Street

Congregational Chapel superseding St Luke's Chapel on Mason Street [CSMR 4473/2/0] built in 1834. Built at the expense of John Tomkinson of Liverpool, a quarry owner who supplied the stone for the Liverpool Custom House and St George's Hall. The foundation stone was laid 25 August 1834, and the building completed by 29 September 1835, at a cost of £6,000. The chapel remained Tomkinson's property until 1851, when financial difficulties obligued him to sell it to the congregation. The interior was severely damaged by fire in 1891.
The Chapel has walls of sandstone ashlar and a slate roof. The body of the chapel is of four bays with two tiers of windows of two lights with rectangular labels, two-stage buttresses, and a battlement parapet which continues up the front and rear gables. The South front has a central porch of two storeys enclosing the gallery staircase and lower porches to each side. A vestry bay at the North end, also dated 1835, has a plain parapet and two shields to the North carved with grotesque heads. All the windows have cast-iron frames.
The interior has a continuous round-ended gallery supported by cast-iron columns of quatrefoil section. An organ recess with plaster barrel-vaulted ceiling was constructed behind the pulpit c1891 replacing first and second-floor rooms at the North end. The roof is supported by three trusses and is ceiled at collar level. It was demolished c.1976 and now lies under Runcorn Bus Station (1).

<1> Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), 1994, An Inventory of Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in the North of England, Cheshire Number 118 (Book). SCH4548.