Community hall built as a First World War memorial, 1926, by James Lindsay Grant. Simplified Romanesque Revival style with some Tudor Revival influences.

St Luke's Memorial Hall, constructed in 1926 to designs by James Lindsay Grant, is not listed for the following principal reasons:

Degree of architectural quality:

* the front elevation has faint echoes of a chapel in its tripartite design, but overall the building is modestly detailed and lacks the architectural distinction and accomplished detailing of other buildings by the same architect;

* the interior is of a standard quality and is representational rather than exceptional.

Degree of historic interest:

* although the hall was built as a living memorial commemorating those of the parish lost during the First World War this is not expressed architecturally and thus its historic interest lies at a local rather than national level.

Degree of group value:

* there are no nearby listed buildings with which to share group value.

St Luke's Memorial Hall was built to commemorate those from the parish who lost their lives during the First World War and the building was paid for by public subscription and fundraising. The foundation stone was laid in January 1926 by Mrs Bennett, a local widow who lost three of her five sons in the war, and the ceremony was also attended by Alderman Holdsworth, Mayor of Wallasey.

The hall was designed by James Lindsay Grant (1866-1938), an Edinburgh-born architect who later lived and worked in Manchester and became head of the Manchester Municipal School of Art, and who also designed the extensions to the neighbouring Church of St Luke in 1906. The hall was opened on 13 November 1926 by Mrs Bennett and Major General Basil Burnett Hitchcock KCB DSO, General Officer Commanding 55th Division.

The hall, which was built for use as a community hall, was regularly used for the staging of amateur operatic shows and was later used by the Boys Brigade. Originally there were two roll of honour plaques in the entrance hall, but these were removed to the Williamson Art Gallery, Wirral for safekeeping when the hall closed in the late C20. The hall has remained disused since its closure.

Community hall built as a First World War memorial, 1926, by James Lindsay Grant. Simplified Romanesque Revival style with some Tudor Revival influences.

MATERIALS: brown brick with some pink-sandstone dressings, slate roof coverings.

PLAN: the building has a square plan with a main hall flanked by classroom side wings, with dressing areas and practice rooms at the rear. It is bounded by Mill Lane to the east, the unlisted Church of St Luke to the south, housing and their associated gardens to the west, and the cleared site of a mid-C20 vicarage to the north.

EXTERIOR: all of the building's original entrance doors and small-pane leaded-glazed windows and timber fixed-pane and casement windows have been boarded over externally, but most survive underneath. Cast-iron rainwater goods also survive.

The principal front elevation facing Mill Lane has a tripartite composition with a central double-height hall flanked by single-storey side wings. The central gabled bay of the hall projects forward and has a near full-height round-arched recess, the top half of which incorporates an integral balcony and has canted side walls. At the base of the recess is the main entrance, which is accessed by a short flight of brick steps and consists of a recessed doorway set within a Tudor-arched pink-sandstone surround with panelled double doors incorporating trefoil-arched glazed lights. The entrance is flanked by small leaded-light windows; that to the right has a sandstone plaque set below with relief lettering that reads 'GREATER LOVE/ HATH NO MAN' (John 15:13 (KJV)). The balcony, which incorporates a sandstone tablet with a gableted head, has central double-doors off an internal mezzanine area behind and is flanked by windows to each canted side. Above is a tall cross window with Tudor-arched upper lights that lights an internal first-floor balcony. The shallow side-return walls of the entrance bay are canted and have a stepped roofline and small windows lighting the ground floor and mezzanine. The lower side wings each have a tall round-arched recess containing a window to the east end and shallow hipped roofs hidden from view behind a parapet. The hall's pitched roof is also largely hidden from view by a parapet, but a tall ridge ventilator is visible.

The building's north and south side elevations are of five-bays with four-light multipaned clerestory windows to the main hall and pilaster strips on the lower side wings up to the height of the base of the parapet. On each north and south side the four eastern bays are lit by tall cross windows (that to the eastern end is set within a round-arched recess), whilst the bay to the western end is wider than the rest and is in the form of a one and a half-storey cross-wing with a shallow gable and stepped profile; part of the gable and its brick copings are missing on the north side of the building. Both cross-wing bays are identically styled with a ground-floor doorway with a Tudor-arched head and simple hoodmould, paired double doors with glazed upper lights, a small window to the side, and a larger window to the first floor with a soldier-course sill band. The west side returns are lit by a large window to the ground floor and two small windows set immediately beneath the eaves. Attached to the rear (west) gable end of the hall, and in-filling the space between the cross-wings, is a lean-to outshut with a central window flanked by two smaller windows. Rising behind the outshut, and through the hall's west gable end, is a square chimneystack.

Enclosing the site to the east alongside Mill Lane is a brown-brick boundary wall with an entrance aligned with the hall's main entrance that incorporates a curtail flight of steps and decorative cast-iron gates flanked by angled, ramped side walls.

INTERIOR: internally there are a mixture of terrazzo, brick, concrete, floorboard and parquet floors, and original panelled (some partly glazed) doors survive, along with moulded door architraves, some of which are damaged. A number of ceilings and parts of the roof have collapsed in places and some of the parquet flooring is damaged.

The main entrance at the east end of the building leads into an entrance hall with double doors leading into the main hall and niches to the two side walls that originally contained two roll of honour plaques that have since been removed to the Williamson Art Gallery, Wirral. Flanking the entrance hall are toilets and in the south-west corner is a stair with curtail steps and a painted-metal geometric balustrade on the landing that accesses mezzanine rooms and stores above the eastern end and provides access out onto the front elevation's external balcony. A further concrete stair alongside the eastern exterior wall leads up from the mezzanine to the internal balcony/gallery overlooking the main hall, which has a tiered floor and no seating.

The main hall is double-height with a vaulted ceiling and a first-floor east balcony/gallery with a simple panelled front. The hall's east wall incorporates a large round-arched recess with a moulded plaster relief above the hall entrance and to each side of the hall is an arcade of three round-arched bays with clerestory windows above. The bays contain partly-glazed folding screens that separate the hall from the side wings. At the western end of the hall is a stage with a panelled front, a plain proscenium and side doors leading off into the rear ancillary rooms. The side wings contain a series of classroom/meeting spaces that are separated by partly-glazed folding screens in the same style as those separating the wings from the main hall.

A number of small ancillary rooms (possibly used as dressing and practice rooms originally) and toilets exist to both floors in the rear cross-wings at the west end of the building. The rooms, which are plain in character but retain original clothing pegs, provide access onto the stage as well as to a narrow linking corridor contained within the rear outshut.