West Park United Reformed Church, Harrogate

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.