Former Model Lodging House For The Great Western Railway

Heritage listing

Details Former model lodging house for workers on the Great Western Railway, begun 1847, revised and completed 1853-5; converted to a Wesleyan chapel in 1869, in use until 1959; converted again to house Great Western Railway Museum, 1962-2000; currently (2020) used for education and performance. MATERIALS Ashlar limestone; asbestos cement roof slates. PLAN Roughly square plan, with full-height open former chapel to the east, and three-storey former lodgings to the west. EXTERIOR The building is in Gothic style, with additional C13-style pointed-arched windows. The original main elevation, to Emlyn Square, is of three storeys, with four-storey end bays, and a central entrance, to which was added a projecting, pitched and gabled porch in 1869, on conversion to a chapel. This houses a pointed-arched doorway with hood mould and label stops. Above the door is inscribed WESLEY / CHAPEL / 1869. The end towers have canted corners and buttresses with offsets, corbel tables and parapets with rectangular, ashlar stacks to the hipped roofs. The ground floor has trefoil-headed paired lights with transoms, which are shouldered to the first and second floors; those to the second floor are raised as gabled half dormers. The end bays have similar triple light windows. The main, Faringdon Road elevation is similar, but with the addition of a large central gable with lancets and gable lights between a pair of later square stair towers, returning by broaches to octagonal louvred turrets above the second floor. The ground and first floors have been altered by the creation of double-height glazed openings associated with the building’s later-C20 use as a railway museum, now partially infilled in limestone. The south side has had its ground- and first-floor windows replaced with pointed-arche

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.