This terrific High Victorian building sits at the busy junction in the middle of Holt where all roads meet. The medieval Anglian parish church of St Andrew is way down beyond the market place, and not visible from most of the town, so it is by the Methodist church that those passing through will remember Holt.

It might easily be mistaken for an Anglican church, or a Catholic one. The 1860s work of Thomas Jekyll, this long tall church hides behind its octagonal apse, a turreted spire rising to the north. The building is in polychromatic banded brick, with flint for details, and there are fine grotesques forming headstops to the window arches. A long clerestory runs the length of the church on both sides. It must have cost an absolute fortune, and was the gift of William Cozens-Hardy of Letheringsett Hall. Shortly after he died, the family converted to Anglicanism.

As ornate as the exterior is, it cannot match the extraordinarily detailed interior, a riot of gorgeous coloured brick, cast iron columns and tracery in the Early English style. Unfortunately, almost none of this can be seen by the public today, because the interior has been partitioned off to such an extent that it is as if you are entering a shoe-box set inside a wedding cake. The western third of the interior has been walled to form meeting rooms, and the organ loft in the upper half of the apse has been glazed. The lower half of the apse is a vestry behind a screen which backs the preaching platform. Most overwhelming of all is the low ceiling that slices the church just at the level of the arcade arches. This was installed because of the fabulous cost of heating this building. Unfortunately, Jekyll's architecture was designed to lift the eye, to give an impression of a towering space, and your gaze today is blanked by an acreage of polystyrene tiles. It makes perfect economic sense, but ultimately defeats the vision of the design.

There is one crucial survival to balance this, however. Holt Methodist church retains in full its original furnishings, a range of pretty box pews that interlink across the nave, two passageways in the aisles connecting the west end with the east. The interior is beautifully cared for, but the furnishings ache to be flooded with light - it was never meant to be this dark in here.

The people here were very friendly, and one kind man even took me behind the scenes. We stepped into the vestry behind the platform, and climbed into the upper part of the apse. This is the former organ loft, and from here there is the surreal sight of the top side of the ceiling, suspended by wires from the roof high above; the lid of the shoe-box, if you like. He told me that it does keep the heat in, but ironically the congregation is now so tiny they can't afford to run the heating anyway - and the heating is now in need of replacing, an impossible dream. In this sense, the building has no future, a curious thing to ponder as I stood at the top of it.

There is more of the church above the ceiling than below it. Up here, you can see the details that are no longer visible to the public - the gorgeously-banded chancel arch, the elaborate curly-leafed capitals and the strong lines of the clerestories, Most dramatic of all is the massive rose window, far away at the west end. Its clear glass has flooded with light nothing but the tops of hundreds of polystyrene tiles for more than twenty years now.

Simon Knott, May 2006