West Park United Reformed Church is located in the West Park area of Harrogate, England, and is a Grade II listed building. It was designed in Nonconformist Gothic style as West Park Congregational Church by Lockwood & Mawson and completed in 1862 for around £5,000. Along with Belvedere Mansion across the road, it was intended as part of the prestigious entrance to the Victoria Park development (now West Park). For the Congregationalists it was meant to house an increasing congregation of visitors brought to the spa town by the recently built railways. It became a United Reformed church in 1972.
Its first minister was the much-loved Reverend John Henry Gavin who died in his prime of tuberculosis and had a big funeral in which many followed the coffin. Sir Francis Crossley laid the foundation stone, Thomas Raffles preached at the opening, and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia later worshipped there. The building has a large Binns pipe organ and the tower contains a single bell cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The gargoyles on the tower have chicks carved on the nest-like capitals below them, and the south wall has twelve carved heads of historical characters, including Isaac Watts, John Bunyan, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell.
In July 2025 the church building held a local history display called the Harrogate Story, and it became a community hub for local events. Although still owned by the United Reformed Church, it is now also known as the West Park Centre.
History Previous buildings During the early 19th century, Nonconformist meetings were held in private houses. Places of worship were later fitted out or built at Hope Chapel Skipton Road around 1813, Cross Chapel Smithy Hill around 1821 or 1823, and Providence Chapel James Street around 1831. Providence Chapel was built on the corner of James Street and John Street from the fabric of the demolished St John's Church on whose site Christ Church was built in 1831. By 1859 the size of the congregation had outgrown the James Street chapel.
Present building This is a Grade II listed building facing The Stray at the junction of Victoria Avenue and West Park Street in Harrogate. When completed as West Park Congregational Church in 1862 the building could be seen from all of Low Harrogate; it was listed primarily for the "townscape value of [the] spire." The original idea to build the church was mooted by Robert Milligan JP, who died before the church was completed. Harrogate (Brunswick) railway station had brought visitors to the town since 1848, but in 1862 it was to be replaced by Harrogate railway station, and this promised to bring visitors from much further afield. To take advantage of this, the developers Victoria Park Company bought up a tract of land, including the new railway station site and abutting The Stray, and called it Victoria Park. The company made Victoria Avenue its main thoroughfare and planned to line it with churches to attract the visitors. The two most prestigious plots, at the gates of Victoria Park and facing onto The Stray, were given to West Park Congregational Church and to "rich banker" John Smith for his new Belvedere Mansion. The church building was designed by Lockwood & Mawson of Bradford, to accommodate 700 Congregationalists, visiting during the Harrogate spa season. The new building was designed with "ample and well ventilated class and school rooms."
When visiting Harrogate in 1894 and 1911, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia worshipped at the Congregational Church and stayed in the neighbouring hotel (now Cathcart House).
In 1972 the church was renamed West Park United Reformed Church, having joined a new amalgamation of Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Churches of Christ. Between 1991 and 2005 the church formed a Joint Pastorate with Bilton Grange Church.
Foundation stone The works had already started when the foundation stone was laid on Wednesday 14 August 1861, in front of a large crowd of Harrogate spa visitors and residents, by Frank Crossley MP.See his sculpture in People's Park, Halifax :File:Frank Crossley (2568645724).jpg Following a service and a sermon "remarkable for the power and elegance of its diction" by Reverend G.W. Conder, at the Independent Chapel, the company including twenty priests and three judges processed to the new site. A "large concourse of persons ... including a considerable number of ladies" awaited them. Under the cornerstone was placed a time capsule in the form of a sealed bottle, containing documents, newspapers and coins. Using his presentation silver trowel, Crossley laid the cornerstone over the cavity and sealed bottle. The company was treated to an address on the history and benefits of Nonconformism. A feast then took place for 130 ladies and gentlemen, followed by speeches and fund-raising for the church; they had so far raised about half of the estimated cost of £5,000.
Opening The church opened at 11.00 a.m. on 13 August 1862.Harrogate West Park United Reformed Church - historical account, accessed 3 August 2016 At the opening service, the church was full to the extent that extra seating was included in the aisles. Present were "a number of the leading Nonconformist gentlemen of the county [of Yorkshire]." These included John Crossley, Edwin Firth, Judge William Willans, Thomas Freeman Firth, Henry Brown, William Milnes, John Wade, William Scholefield, Dr John Greenwood, Miles Illingworth, John Peele Clapham JP, John Northorp, William Hartley Lee, John Shaw, Jabez Howell , George Brown, R. Gallsworthy, Henry Francis Lockwood, Rev. Dr Thomas Raffles, Rev. S. Martin, Rev. J.G. Neall, Rev. G.W. Conder, Rev. J.H. Morgan, Rev. W. Howes, Rev. R. Harris, Rev. F. Barnes, Rev. Henry Simon, Rev. Joseph Croft, and Rev. Horrocks Cox. (Court record 14 November 1867: Henry Halliwell Fish an infant by James Halliwell his next friend v. James Woods and The Reverend Horrocks Cock ref. C78/2210, no. 12) Rev Raffles preached a "powerful sermon" which brought in a respectable collection of £89 6s. 3d.
The building committee and many of the visiting VIPs met in the school room in the afternoon to organise efforts to complete funding of the works. Even after raising £1,290 in the sale of the former chapel, the committee would still owe £1,500. The VIPs brought money gifts and promises totalling £710 towards the debt. The evening service, bringing in a collection of £51. 9s. 9d., was conducted by Rev. S. Martin of Westminster.
At the opening
Building Site and works The site of the church was at one of the entrances to the development estate of Victoria Park, which was created at about the same time, and faced west towards The Stray. "The site [was originally] inclosed by a low fence-wall and handsome Gothic railing and gates, and the flagged footpath [was] five yards in width." The total cost of land, materials and labour was £5,871 19s. 5d, the building alone costing £4,339. The contractor for the works was R. Ellis Junior of Harrogate. John P. Clapham J.P. led the building committee and superintended the works.
Exterior It was described in 1863 by the Illustrated London News as a "beautiful Congregational Church." It is built of "rusticated gritstone ashlar with strings, buttresses and pairs of gargoyles, between bays." It was designed for 700 people, and has a tower and a "very elegant" spire high, the whole being inspired by the Decorated Gothic style. The belfry and spire are octagonal. The building originally had three main trefoiled doorways, giving access to the vestibule, and thence to the aisles, the ground floor, and the staircase to the west gallery. The two west-front entrances are now windows, and the tower contains the single main entrance, which has been moved to the west side.See images :File:Congregational Church Harrogate (1).JPG and :File:West Park URC Harrogate, 17 July 2020 (12).JPG. The west end of the building has a five-light window and a small belfry. The two-light windows on the south side have coped gables above, and on the exterior of those gables are the twelve sculpted heads of historical characters, including Isaac Watts, John Bunyan, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. These sculptures appear to be late 19th or early 20th century replacements, and the church website says they may have been carved by a Roman Catholic artist. The roof has fishtail slates. At the back of the building are the chapel, and the minister's and deacon's vestries. At right angles to the building are the school and classrooms to seat 200 children, and these were built with separate entrances for boys and girls.
In 1999 an outside ramp was added along the southern wall for wheelchair access. In 2000, as a millennium project, floodlights were installed to light up the exterior.
Heads on south wall
Interior The main interior ground floor space is a parallelogram and is high, the lack of transepts and side-aisles being conducive to good acoustics. The roof is supported internally by iron columns with foliated capitals, and the five traceried lights of the west window are visible above the gallery. The original open pews (destroyed in 2019) had leaning backs, and were wide so as to accommodate the wide skirts - or perhaps figures - of rich visitors in the spa season. The interior was originally lit by "two handsome brass coronas, each of thirty lights." There are three First World War memorials: two stained glass windows with figures of St Michael with St George, and David and Jonathan, and a brass wall plaque. There are also plaques in memory of John Peel Clapham who chaired the building committee 1861–1862, and the church's first minister Rev. John H. Gavin.
Considerable modernisation has taken place here. In 1993 the pulpit was removed and the sanctuary adapted for use by drama and music groups. The Communion table was moved to the centre of the dais, and the organ was rebuilt at this time. The old lavatory known as the ladies' parlour became a suite of renovated toilets and the Raglan Room, which is now used for meetings. In 1994 the original school rooms at the east end of the building were modernised and adapted for use by various organisations. In 1999 floor levels were adapted for accessibility. At some point the interior was split vertically so that it had a first floor hall with a stage and kitchen. In 2002 this upstairs space was fully modernised with a badminton court, and named the West Park Hall in 2003. Between 2012 and 2014 the heating was repaired, the sanctuary refurbished and the pews removed. As of 2020 the church is considering "further major alterations."
Organ and bell The church's first organ was installed by Booth of Wakefield at a cost of £350 in 1869. On 7 July 1869 organist W.T. Best opened the instrument by playing "airs, solos, recitatives, quartets and choruses." The second pipe organ was obtained from Forster and Andrews in 1899.Musical Opinion, November 1899 The current 1894 James Jepson Binns organ was obtained from the much larger St. Paul's Church, Semilong, Northampton, in 1993 and installed inside the original Forster and Andrews casing by Peter Wood.
There is one Mears 3 cwt bell in G in the tower. It was cast in 1812. The inscription on the bell says: "IB: THOS EMMATT CHAPEL WARDEN 1812 THOS MEARS OF LONDON FECIT." When Christ Church was built in 1831, St John's, the previous church on that site, was demolished and its bell taken by the Nonconformists to their chapel in James Street, and later in 1862 to the present building. As of February 2020 the bell was still rung on Sundays.
Stained glass windows
Ministers Before the West Park building