OS grid reference SJ 390 880 Denomination Baptist Opened 1906 | Country England Churchmanship Evangelical Phone +44 151 733 4791 Groundbreaking 1905 | |
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Website Dovedale Baptist Church Similar Church of St Matthew and St Ja, Church of All Hallows, Coronation Chair, Calderstones Park, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral | ||
Dovedale Baptist Church, (formerly Wavertree Baptist Church, sometimes referred to as Mossley Hill Baptist Church) is in Dovedale Road, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is an active Baptist church, and the church building is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
Contents
History
The church was built in 1905–06, and designed by George and R. P. Baines.
Exterior
The church is faced with flint, an unusual building material in Liverpool, with dressings in red brick and terracotta. The roof is in slate with a cresting of red tiles. It has a T-shaped plan, consisting of a nave and transepts as wide as the nave, and a southwest tower. The tracery in the windows is Perpendicular in style. The entrance front is gabled, and contains a central doorway with a four-centred arch flanked by diagonal buttresses and two-light windows. Above this is a seven-light window. At the top of the gable are pinnacles and a traceried panel with gargoyles. This section is flanked on the left by a porch with a pyramidal roof, and on the right by the tower. The tower contains an entrance, above which is a three-light square-headed window, and over this are three-light square-headed bell openings. The tower had to be reduced in height in 1989 following concerns over structural stability; the current one is therefore truncated. The transepts are also gabled, and contain two tiers of windows. Attached to the rear of the church is a hall with gables containing five-light windows.
Interior
Inside the church is a crossing with a four-centred arch on each side carried on thin quatrefoil columns. There is a central pulpit, in front of which is an immersion font and semicircular benches. Behind the pulpit is an organ. In the windows is coloured glass with Art Nouveau features. The three-manual pipe organ was made in 1906 by Hill, Norman and Beard.
Present day
The church building is located on Dovedale Road, on the junction with Barndale Road on one side and Olivedale Road on the other. The main entrance to the church is on Dovedale Road with side entrances to the church hall on both Barndale Road and Olivedale Road. It is in membership with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Evangelical Alliance and Churches Together in Mossley Hill. Its minister from 1994 to 2011 was Wayne Clarke, who was also a BBC religious broadcaster. On Sundays the church organises Morning Worship and a Sunday Club. During the week it arranges meetings for women, and for parents and toddlers. Brownies and Guides meet in the church.