Listed Building record MDR12561 - Bonsall Baptist Church, Yeoman Street, Bonsall

A grade II listed Non-Conformist chapel, with attached railings, entrance gatepiers and boundary walls. The chapel is dated 1824, with minor late 20th century alterations. It is built of roughcast rubble limestone, with ashlar gritstone dressings and a Staffordshire Blue clay tile roof covering. It has a simple linear plan, aligned north-south, with an east side wall entrance and north gallery. The east elevation has a three-bay front, with tall semi-circular arch-headed windows set within ashlar surrounds, with keyblocks and projecting cills. To the right-hand end, there is a semi-circular arch-headed doorway, with keylock, fanlight and six-panel door. Above the doorway, there is a plaque that reads "BAPTIST 1824". Inside, the entrance leads into a lobby to the rear of the chapel, from which a plain stick baluster stair gives access to the gallery, which retains contemporary tiered benching. At ground floor level, panelled settles separate the body of the chapel from the entrance lobby. There is dado boarding to the chapel walls, and a simple central pulpit with ball finials above a boarded frontage. To the front of the chapel are spear-headed railings, which enclose the frontage plot and extending eastwards to the entrance gatepiers. The gatepiers are of square section with depressed pyramidal caps, the left-hand pier supporting a metal lamp fitting. There is a railed entrance gate with a mid rail. Attached are rubble limestone boundary walls set at an angle to define the entrance area, then extending south and north, with plain flat coping. The chapel was originally built as a preaching station of the Baptist Church of nearby Wirksworth. It is a little-altered example of an early 19th century Baptist chapel, serving a small rural mixed industrial and agricultural community, which demonstrates, both externally and internally, the characteristic simplicity and modesty of fittings and finishes of churches of the Baptist movement of the period. (1)