Poole Methodist Church (also known as Poole High Street Methodist Church or The Spire) is a nineteenth-century Methodist church on Poole High Street in Dorset, England. An extension to the church was nominated for the 2016 Carbuncle Cup for "the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months".
A methodist chapel existed in Poole from 1793, but was shut down when the Poole Methodist Church was built. [1] [2] Poole Methodist Church was built by Charles Bell between 1878 and 1880 out of Purbeck and Bath stone, and was opened to the public in 1880. [3] [4] [5] It is a gothic building, with a distinguishable large pointed north-west tower, and a chapel building that was built in 1893. [6] [3] [7] [5] Between 1843 and 1985, the church was part of the Poole Methodist Circuit, a collection of methodist churches in the Poole and East Dorset area. [8] During the Second World War, the building was used as a schoolroom. [4]
In 2005, five methodist churches in Poole combined into one congregation based at the Poole Methodist Church. [9] In 2011, the church was used as a polling station for the United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum. [10]
In the summer of 2009, the church was closed for safety reasons after plaster from the building's walls started to fall off. [3] An application was made that year to renovate and extend the building, to make it the centre of Poole's methodist community. [3] [11] The project was estimated to cost £4 million, [12] and was accepted in 2010. [13] Phase one of the project was completed in 2014, with the introduction of a new café; [14] the project received around £200,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation. [15] The church's windows were later replaced by double glazed windows. [16] The new extension was completed in 2016, with the church rebranding itself as "The Spire". [17] The extension replaced a previous Georgian chapel. [13] In 2016, the extension was nominated for the Carbuncle Cup, an annual award given to "the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months". [7] [13] [18] The Guardian described the extension as "a pile of site Portakabins they forgot to remove." [7]
Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi), Dorset borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The county town is Dorchester, in the south. After the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the county border was extended eastward to incorporate the Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch. Around half of the population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation, while the rest of the county is largely rural with a low population density.
Bournemouth is a coastal resort town on the south coast in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole borough of Dorset, England. The town had a population of 183,491 at the 2011 census making it the largest town in the county; the town is part of the South East Dorset conurbation, which has a population of 465,000.
Christchurch is a town and civil parish on the south coast of Dorset, England. The parish had a population of 31,372 in 2021. It adjoins Bournemouth to the west, with the New Forest to the east. Part of the historic county of Hampshire, Christchurch was a borough within the administrative county of Dorset from 1974 until 2019, when it became part of the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority.
Poole is a coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is 21 miles (34 km) east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council which is a unitary authority. Poole had an estimated population of 151,500 making it the second-largest town in the ceremonial county of Dorset. Together with Bournemouth and Christchurch, the conurbation has a total population of nearly 400,000.
Tower Park is a leisure and retail park, located at Mannings Heath, in Poole, Dorset, England. It was one of the first complexes of its kind in Europe when it opened in 1989.
Boscombe is a suburb of Bournemouth, England. Historically in Hampshire, but today in Dorset, it is located to the east of Bournemouth town centre and west of Southbourne.
Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s.
Upton is a town in south-east Dorset, England. Upton is to the east of Holton Heath and Upton Heath, and to the north of the Poole suburb of Hamworthy. It is the second largest town in the Purbeck Hills.
Canford Heath is a suburb and area of heathland in Poole, Dorset, known for being the largest heathland in Dorset, and the largest lowland heath in the UK. It is also the name of the housing development built on the heathland in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The area is split into two wards, and at the 2011 census the combined population of the two wards was 14,079.
St Peter's Church is a Church of England parish church located in the centre of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. It is a Grade I listed building classed as a 'major parish church', and was completed in 1879 to a design by George Edmund Street as the founding mother church of Bournemouth. The building incorporates work by some of the finest Gothic Revival architects and artists, including Street, George Frederick Bodley, Ninian Comper, Arthur Blomfield and Edward Burne-Jones, with stained-glass windows and frescoes by Clayton and Bell. The chancel has been described as 'one of the richest Gothic Revival interiors in England'. The 202-foot (62 m)-high spire is a landmark in Bournemouth Town Centre, where it is the Town Centre Parish Church, together with the churches of St Stephen and St Augustine.
The history of Bournemouth and human settlement in the surrounding area goes back for thousands of years. Bournemouth is a coastal city on the island of Great Britain in Dorset, England, United Kingdom.
The Burns Monument in Kay Park, Kilmarnock, Scotland, commemorates the poet Robert Burns (1759–1796). It is located at an elevated position within Kay Park, to the east of Kilmarnock Town Centre. The monument was opened in 1879, and is a category B listed building. In 2004 a fire destroyed part of the monument. The building was restored and extended as a genealogy centre, reopening as the Burns Monument Centre in 2009.
Poole Hospital is an acute general hospital in Poole, Dorset, England. Built in 1907, it has expanded from a basic 14-bed facility into a 789-bed hospital. It is the trauma centre for east Dorset and provides specialist services such as cancer treatment for the entire county. It is managed by the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital was managed by Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust until the merger with The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on 1 October 2020.
The Carbuncle Cup was an architecture prize, given annually by the magazine Building Design to "the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months". It was intended to be a humorous response to the prestigious Stirling Prize, given by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Ensbury Park is a mainly residential suburb of Bournemouth, in Dorset, England. It includes the housing estate of Slades Farm and lies within the ward district of Northbourne and Redhill.
The Dolphin Shopping Centre is a shopping centre in Poole, Dorset, England, formerly known as the Arndale Centre.
Skinner Street United Reformed Church is the oldest church in Poole, Dorset, England. The current building is the only eighteenth century church building in Poole, and is a Grade II* listed building. The church has a grave for Cyril Coles, one of the gunners in the first tank attack in 1916. The church is used as an adult learning centre.
Poole Civic Centre is an Art Deco municipal building in Poole, Dorset. Since 7 October 2019 the building has been a Grade II listed building. Also sometimes known as Poole Town Hall, the civic centre was the headquarters of Poole Borough Council until 2019.
The Bournemouth Blitz was the heavy bombing of Bournemouth, Hampshire, England from 1940 to 1944, by the Nazi German Luftwaffe during the Second World War.