Wesley's Chapels
Wesley's Chapels Christopher Stell Nothing could have been further from the mind of John Wesley as he set out on his mission than that there should ever exist such a class of buildings as 'Mr Wesley's chapels'. Professing a continued loyalty to the church within which he had been ordained, he saw his societies as auxiliary to the established religion, meeting for mutual support and instruction while maintaining a regular attendance at the public services within their respective parishes.
Clerical fears of enthusiasm and insistence on the maintenance of hierarchical discipline and privileges soon combined to close many London pulpits against the episcopally ordained Methodist preachers, with the result that chapels such as West Street were acquired in which they felt free to conduct the services of the church and to administer the sacrament. A rapid rise in the number of Methodist societies throughout the country due to the energetic work of many itinerant preachers led to a corresponding demand for 'preaching-houses'; though seen at first as but an elaboration of the society rooms, these soon took on a more positive role as centres of worship and, in popular parlance, became 'chapels' where increasingly towards the end of Wesley's life the right to hold sacramental services was being sought. Few of these chapels or preaching-houses can properly be described as Wesley's in architectural terms, his concern being principally to maintain his right to the appointment of preachers free from the whims of local trustees, but he was by no means without views on their design or hesitant to give advice when that was called for.
Little of architectural quality can have existed in the first of the society rooms to be set up in London when, in November 1739,
Wesley was persuaded, with some reluctance, to preach in what
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives LS AA New Room, Bristol . {73948 Colliers Chapel, Kingswood. 1739
Orphan House, Newcastle. 1742
Rotherham .1761
Netherthong. 1769
City Road, London.
Wesley's Chapels
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives remained of an old foundry building in Windmill Street, its walls shattered by an explosion many years before. Nothing daunted, he bought the lease, repaired the walls and early in the following year it became the home of a new society, distinct from that in Fetter
Lane, later to become Moravian, to which Wesley earlier belonged. There the principal London society remained until 1776 and there in the adjoining house Wesley lodged on his many visits, and there, too, his mother passed her closing years. It was a plain building which by 1763 required further major repairs, but it was large, having three galleries and seating fifteen hundred people, mainly on backless benches, the sexes being rigorously segregated.
Even before the Foundery was brought into use the Religious Societies in Bristol, of which there were several, were in need of more suitable premises than the hired rooms in which they met.
Wesley had travelled to Bristol in April 1739 to take over from George Whitefield the superintendence of these societies; on 9
May he entered into possession of a piece of ground lying hidden behind houses at the back of the Horsefair and on 12 May he laid the foundation stone for the new Society Room — Wesley's New
Room in the Horsefair. The original appearance of this building is still very much a matter of conjecture following much rebuilding and enlargement in 1748. Perhaps the walls of the 'little tenement or lodge' which stood there were incorporated into it or their materials were re-used, for the contract 'to pay the workmen about 160 pounds as soon as it is finished' left little scope for extravagance. The room served many purposes including that of a day school, its main adornments were a desk covered with a piece of green cloth and a modest pair of eight-branch chandeliers, and its ancillary rooms comprised a small vestry and a garret furnished with a bed. By 1742 concern was being felt over the condition of the building and for the repayment of the debt; the latter was overcome by the introduction of the Class system, the former only by rebuilding. The enlarged room which fortunately survives was much more a preaching-house than was its predecessor and, though still hidden and without the need for external show, it has sufficient internal grandeur, with its six imposing stone columns carrying the upper floor and the all-embracing galleries, to make its ascription to the architect George Tully a distinct possibility.
As in the Friends' meeting-house nearby on which Tully was also engaged, additional light is obtained from a central lantern in the
Wesley's Chapels
roof, while the former garret has blossomed into a full suite ofrooms for the 'family' of circuit preachers for whom this was home.
A northern counterpart to the New Room was to be found in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where a society formed in 1742 met firstina hired room known as 'the Tabernacle'. Again Wesley suffered no delay, by December he had acquired not one but two adjacent pieces of ground on which was built the 'Orphan House'. Its name indicated an intention which was never achieved that it should house orphan children as well as serve as a preaching-house, school and accommodation for preachers. The building survived until
1857 although superseded in its principal function in 1821 by the erection of Brunswick Chapel. It comprised alarge preaching room with pulpit and forms, to which galleries were later added, over which were various society rooms; on the top floor were the preacher's apartments and on the roof 'a wooden erection, about eleven feet square, with tiled covering, generally known as '"'Mr
Wesley's Study"'.'
Of greater architectural prominence was the Colliers' schoolchapel at Kingswood where, on his departure from Bristol in 1739,
Whitefield laid a foundation stone. Shortly afterwards Wesley took the work in hand with his accustomed vigour on a new site 'between the London and Bath roads'. He describes the schoolhouse as a large room with four small rooms at each end for the schoolmasters.
This was a building very much in the meeting-house tradition with a broad front and steeply hipped roof which, although demolished about 1917, survives in the design of the front of Whitefield's
Tabernacle, Kingswood, built by John Cennick after his break with Wesley.
One of the few preaching-houses to remain from the first two decades of Methodism and one which still exhibits evidence of modest architectural pretensions is at Bradford on Avon. There, hidden behind other buildings in Market Street, is the former chapel believed to have been opened in 1756. The valleys ofits triple roof were evidently supported by four wooden columns standing on stone piers, a gallery extended around three sides and at the end of the longer axis is a Venetian window high above the site of the pulpit. It was registered of necessity, though doubtless to John
Wesley's displeasure, in accordance with the Act of Toleration as a meeting-house for Protestant Dissenters and described as 'a house or edifice lately erected adjoining the dwellinghouse of John Silby'.
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives In the following year Wesley's attention was drawn to a novel design in chapel building which for the next twenty years found considerable favour. This began in 1757 with his visit to 'Dr
Taylor's new meeting-house' in Norwich which, in fulsome though guarded praise, he describes as 'perhaps the most elegant one in Europe'. The Presbyterian octagon, even then the seat of questionable orthodoxy, being 'finished in the highest taste' and 'as clean as any nobleman's saloon' was dismissed as unlikely to admit 'the old coarse gospel'. It is interesting to note that the first polygonal Methodist chapel to be built after this visit of which we have any record was not octagonal: the new house in Colchester of 1759 is described by Wesley as 'twelve square' and 'the best building, of the size, for the voice that I know in England'. Its quality as a preaching-house was what mattered, its architectural elegance, if any, receives no mention. The first of his octagon chapels came two years later, at Rotherham, where in July 1761
Wesley preached 'in the shell of the new house' adding the comment: 'Pity our houses, when the*ground will admit of it, should be built in any other form'.
The earliest surviving Methodist octagon is at Stroud, built in 1763 and now used by the Salvation Army. This illustrates one of the main problems of the style, subsequent enlargement requiring much more costly construction than in a simple rectangular building. The same problem was subsequently faced at Heptonstall in the chapel of 1764. Also of that date is the oldest unextended octagon, at Yarm; 'by far the most elegant in England', says Wesley, who two years later contrasts it with one at Thirsk. 'Almost equal to that at Yarm', he says, 'and why not quite, seeing they had the model before their eyes and had nothing to do but to copy after it? Is it not an amazing weakness that, when they have the most beautiful pattern before them, all builders will affect to mend something? So the je ne sais quoi is lost, and the second building scarce ever equals the first.' But some improvement was still possible; also in 1766 at Bradford 'the largest octagon we have in England' is described as 'the first of the kind where the roof is built with common sense, rising only a third of its breadth'. No wonder then that the Canterbury polygon, then but two years old, with its ten or twelve sides and its steep roof, was known as the 'pepper box chapel'.
Enthusiasm for the octagon did not last; its limitations and its
Wesley's Chapels
complexities of construction were soon apparent and, while occasional later examples such as those still remaining at Arbroath, of 1772, and Taunton, of 1776, are known, another and more lasting exemplar was about to appear. The octagon was well suited to its purpose as a preaching-house, and its use was not confined to Methodists. Other denominations, too, even the established Church, had their octagonal churches and chapels.
But to Wesley the ideal place of worship was the parish church as built or modified in the eighteenth century, with its communion table at the east end and a tall three-decker pulpit prominently sited centrally in front of it. This was not only the most convenient position for preaching but it preserved to the sacrament something of the mystery which is lacking in other arrangements.
When, in 1775, the time came to replace the Foundery, then threatened by the possibility of redevelopment by the City
Corporation, the New Foundery, or the New Chapel as it soon came to be called, built on a nearby site in City Road, was designed in strict conformity to accepted taste. This was Wesley's ideal chapel of which, as having more responsibility for its appearance than many over which he enthused, he modestly wrote on the day of opening in 1776; 'it is perfectly neat, but not fine'. The finery and the elaboration followed later as loving care broke the bounds of discretion and sought to gild a lily which is sufficiently honoured in bearing the name of Wesley's Chapel.
Here the full liturgical services of the church to which the Wesleys professed adherence could be maintained free from episcopal restraint, and to this pattern the Methodist societies looked increasingly for guidance as they came to acknowledge their independence as a unique and powerful denomination. A few years later, in 1779, when Wesley opened the new chapel at Bath he observed that 'it is about half as large as that at London, and built nearly upon the same model'. So effective did this prove that in 1790 the Conference decreed that 'all preaching-houses are to be built in future upon the same plan as the London or Bath chapel'.
With the design of most of the innumerable chapels and preaching-houses built during his lifetime John Wesley can have had little direct concern. He and his fellow preachers sowed the seeds of the new societies, he frequently preached 'in the shell of the new house' even before completion and often records a few
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives brief words of admiration. The new house at St Just in Cornwall was, in 1757, 'the largest and most commodious in the county'.
The new room in Salisbury, of 1759, was declared to be 'the most complete in England'; Doncaster, of 1776, was 'one of the most elegant houses in England', while at Bolton the new house opened in 1777 was 'the most beautiful in the country'. Advice would occasionally be given on more detailed matters as it was in 1757 over the building of the Peaseholme Green preaching-house in York when he wrote: 'I believe each window may stand eight foot
(the bottom of it) from the ground, and be four foot broad and six or seven high, arched at the top', but this was exceptional, and more often the builders would be free to exercise their own judgement in the light of local building traditions.
The little chapel at Whittlebury, Northamptonshire, commenced in 1763 by 'a truly loving and simple people', but not completed until many years later, was hardly more than a simple cottage probably once hidden behind other buildings. The same might be said of the former cob-built préaching-house at Cubert in Cornwall, again a plain building in the local vernacular style. The chapel at Crich in Derbyshire, built in 1765, is more distinctive with its windows 'arched at the top', as was the contemporary preaching-house in St Michael's Lane, Derby, buildings respectively in stone and brick and each with two doorways as a visual reminder of Wesley's remark that 'we make no distinction but between men and women', a separation which he long attempted to enforce. Some Yorkshire preaching-houses follow a pattern which served equally well for other denominations, with two tall windows flanking a front pulpit. One of the best of these is at Eccleshill near Bradford where Wesley preached in 1776 and where, twelve years later, he spent some hours in fruitless discussion with the trustees in an attempt to persuade them to revise the trust deed. A similar, though slightly more elaborate, chapel had been built at Netherthong about 1769 after Methodist preachers had been discouraged for some time from visiting
Huddersfield in deference to the wishes of the vicar, the Rev.
Henry Venn. Both these buildings survive, though no longer in Methodist hands, as worthy reminders of the ever-declining number of preaching-houses in which the father of Methodism once expounded the word of God. Fewer than fifty of these now remain, some greatly altered, others only recognizable, if at all,
Wesley's Chapels
with the eye of faith, and yet all possessing not the 'je ne sais quoi' of which Thirsk was found wanting but a genius loci which transcends the glories of architecture. The New Room and the New Chapel in City Road are not the only significant examples of Wesley's chapels. They are the architectural extremes. Between them lie
High House and Newbiggin in the north, the hidden gem of Raithby, the little cottage chapel at Winchelsea, the octagons and many others whose walls bear silent but moving witness to the faith which raised them and the spark whence it arose.
Bibliography N. Curnock (ed.), The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 1909-16.
G. W. Dolbey, The Architectural Expression of Methodism, 1964.
G. Eayrs, Wesley and Kingswood and its Free Churches, 1911.
F.C. Gill, Jn the Steps of jehn Wesley, 1962.
C. Dean Little, 'Early Methodist Octagons', Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society,
W. W. Stamp, The Orphan-house of Wesley .
. ., 1863.
J. Telford (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 1931.
J. Vickers and Betty Young, A Methodist Guide to London and the South-East, 1980.
M. W. Woodward, One at London: Some Account of Mr Wesley's Chapel and London House, 1966.