A new dual-purpose building, incorporating some elements from its predecessor built in 1881.

Measham was originally a coal-mining village and not wealthy. In 1881 the Countess of Loudon, who lived at Willesley Hall on the outskirts of Ashby de la Zouch commissioned the architect C. G. Wray to design a small chapel which could also be used as a school. The building was to be ‘as cheap as possible, the only ornaments to be a three-light window with a niche in the front next the street’. A new school was built on land adjoining the chapel in the early 1960s. In the 1990s the poor structural condition of the old chapel led to proposals for rebuilding with a new dual-purpose community hall with parking and new housing on the rest of the site. Early in 2007 the chapel and presbytery were demolished and the new building erected at the rear of the site. At the same time the post-war school buildings were extended with additional classrooms and an enlarged hall.

The new church/hall building is cruciform in plan with a large entrance porch set at an angle to the main structure. The walls are faced with red brick laid in stretcher bond, the tall pitched roofs are covered in grey concrete tiles. The fenestration is modern in style and domestic in character, although apparently a quatrefoil window from the old church has been placed within the new building. The tabernacle and some other furnishings from the old chapel have also been reused.

Heritage Details