286, formerly Swaythling Methodist Church, is a grade II listed

gurdwara A gurdwara (sometimes written as gurudwara) (Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ''guradu'ārā'', meaning "Door to the Guru") is a place of assembly and worship for Sikhs. Sikhs also refer to gurdwaras as ''Gurdwara Sahib''. People from all faiths ...

and former

church building A church, church building or church house is a building used for Christian worship services and other Christian religious activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 and 256. From the 11th thro ...

Swaythling Swaythling is a suburb and electoral ward of the city of Southampton in Hampshire, England. The ward has a population of 13,664. Swaythling is predominantly residential in character, and noted for its large student population due to its proxi ...

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

. The building was owned and managed by Southampton Methodist Circuit with City Life Church providing assistance with the day-to-day operations. Until the building was sold in 2021, Swaythling Methodist Church continued to meet on the premises in the Nona Bell Centre as a community of St James Road Methodist Church in Shirley, having closed as an official Methodist Church in 2013.

Building

The building includes a number of halls and smaller rooms in addition to the main auditorium, as well as a

manse A manse () is a clergy house inhabited by, or formerly inhabited by, a minister, usually used in the context of Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and other Christian traditions. Ultimately derived from the Latin ''mansus'', "dwelling", from '' ...

and some workshops. Designed by

Herbert Collins Herbert Collins (1885–1975) was a British architect, born in Edmonton, London. He designed many of the suburban developments in the city of Southampton in the 1920s and 1930s. Life Collins designed houses in Southampton from 1922, became a ...

in a neo-

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

style and built in 1932, following his construction of many houses in the surrounding area, with the remit "I have built the houses, now build a place for the people to go". The buildings were constructed in partnership with

J. Arthur Rank Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (22 December 1888 – 29 March 1972) was a British industrialist who was head and founder of the Rank Organisation. Family business Rank was born on 22 or 23 December 1888 at Kingston upon Hull in England into ...

with full cinema facilities. The projector room is still present. The main auditorium is octagonal with a balcony over the entrance porch; the balcony is accessible via two stair towers on the north face. Attached to the south side is a wing containing other halls and rooms. Separate buildings on the west of the site contain some workshops and the manse. The roof of the main hall is shallowly domed and clad in copper, topped by a copper-clad cupola. The whole site was

grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

on 20 November 1997. In April 2016, the Methodist Council approved the transfer of the building, then valued at £900,000 to City Life Church under the provisions of "Model Trust 20" - a Methodist Church policy that allows buildings to be sold below their value if it enables Christian worship to continue on the premises. The transfer - technically a sale at nil value - was justified on the basis of the significant maintenance costs, with an estimate that over £900,000 worth of repairs to the building were needed. However, in April 2018 the Council noted that "it has not been possible to find an acceptable form of wording for the requirements for a trust of sale" This was partly because Model Trust 20 included a "reverter" clause which meant that, should a building be subsequently sold by the new owner, net proceeds of that sale should be given to the Methodist Church. The Council therefore adopted a new version of Model Trust 20 that altered these terms. In 2021, the Methodist Church again altered the Model Trust 20 policy, introducing clause 6: "Once the Council has approved the ‘in principle’ decision to sell for less than best price, completion of the sale must take place within three years from that point." With the under-value sale having been approved in 2016 this meant that the term for selling 286 had expired and it was placed for sale on the open market with a guide price of £1.2 million; it was sold to a

Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...

group who then launched a £50,000 renovation plan, converting the building into a

Gurdwara A gurdwara (sometimes written as gurudwara) (Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ''guradu'ārā'', meaning "Door to the Guru") is a place of assembly and worship for Sikhs. Sikhs also refer to gurdwaras as ''Gurdwara Sahib''. People from all faiths ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Southampton, 286, Southampton Grade II listed buildings in Hampshire Churches completed in 1932 20th-century Methodist church buildings