The building illustrated was designed by Charles Bell (1846-1899), a London architect responsible for the design of sixty Wesleyan chapels. It was originally described as Thurlow Park Wesleyan chapel.
The foundation stone of this church was laid on June 11, 1879, and the building was completed in the following year. The church is designed in Early English Gothic style and is faced with Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings. At the north-east corner there is a tower supporting a stone spire. The side aisles have transverse roofs which are gabled, and the west end is apsidal. A clock was erected in the tower in 1888. The cost of the church amounted to about £15,000.
At the time of the 1940 Statistical Returns, it could seat 1040. It is still in use as a Methodist church.
Reference: The twenty-sixth annual report of the Wesleyan Chapel Committee, 1880 frontispiece
Statistical returns … as at July 1st 1940. Manchester: Methodist Church, Department of Chapel Affairs, 1947
‘Norwood: Churches’, in Survey of London: Volume 26, Lambeth: Southern Area, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1956), pp. 173-180. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol26/pp173-180 [accessed 21 November 2019].
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The fine Victorian church was demolished in 1967. Most of the site is covered by a supermarket and flats above. There is a small replacement church at the back of the original site.
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