Just thought I'd share some autumn photos. The building is one of my chapels and was built as a Wesleyan Chapel in 1795. We recently found out that it's apparently one of the older chapel buildings in the country. The entire centre of town where the chapel is located is that age, so no one in the congregation ever gave it a second thought!
3 comments:
Interesting to see the ancient church in your care because you are right that it must be one of the earliest Methodist chapels still in continuous use. When I get time to write it up, I want to describe my visit last month to what is advertised as 'believed to be the oldest Methodist Chapel in the world in continuous use'. Its indenture is 1759 and it was opened in 1760, so just a few years ealier than the one you have depicted. Greetings and congratulations to its people!
Thanks, Olive. :-)
I'd not even thought about the 'continuous use' - but you are right.
Much of the centre of town was developed in the late 18th century when the town boomed as an inland port on the Severn; however there are even a few Tudor buildings in the centre of town. The Anglican Church was built in 1787, I believe.
The Catholic Church in town is a beautiful, circular neo-classic building tucked well away behind several other buildings but affording congregants a beautiful, meditative view of the trees and gardens outside through the plain glass. It was built as a Presbyterian chapel, then became a Unitarian chapel and was consecrated as a Catholic church in the 1940s.
In front of our chapel, when it was first built, was a bakery. As you probably know, people weren't supposed to be able to identify the buildings as chapels because they were non-conformist.
That'll be High House in Weardale, Olive - opened in 1760, it is almost certainly the oldest chapel in continuous Methodist use, closely followed by the octagonal chapel in Yarm (1763) and the octagonal chapel in Heptonstall (one of mine) opened in 1764. Wesley's Chapel in City Road, which proclaims itself as "the mother church of world Methodism" is a relative youth from 1778. The New Room in Bristol is of course the oldest Methodist building in the world, dating from 1739, but hasn't been in continuous Methodist use.
Can't let these southerners steal the show, can we? ;)
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