"It is a late work of Joseph Crouch.
Crouch & Butler were fine turn-of-the-century architects
in Birmingham and produced Methodist churches, houses and books.
Churches, Mission Halls and Schools for Nonconformists ( 1901, published
by Buckler & Webb, Birmingham) is their best known book, though
Crouch's The Planning and Designing of a Methodist Church (1930, Silk
& Terry, Birmingham) contains a plan of Beckminster. Crouch
also produced Puritanism and Art: an Inquiry into a Popular Fallacy
(1910, Cassell, London). Crouch & Butler wrote "The
Apartments of the House: their Arrangement, Furnishing and Decoration"
in 1900.
My guess is that Crouch was the church man in the
practice and that Butler had gone by the time of Beckminster.
The plan in Crouch's book shows a manse on the opposite
side of the site to the church but it seems that this was never built."
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