Buildings of nonconformity

Christopher Wakeling, Chapels of England: Buildings of Protestant nonconformity
Published by Historic England

The next of my short series of pre-Christmas reviews is of a book that plugs a major gap in English architectural history: a general account of Protestant chapels and meeting houses...

The architecture of England’s Protestant churches (from Methodists to Unitarians, Baptists to Quakers) has been a difficult subject to get to grips with. There has been plenty of research (the old Royal Commission on Historic Monuments saw to that) but there is such diversity of denominations and architectural approaches that it is hard to see patterns or get a sense of overall development. In addition, nonconformist churches, unlike so many Anglican churches, are not often open, so casual visitors rarely get inside them.

Christopher Wakeling’s new book does much to remedy this situation, giving a clear, wide-ranging, and nuanced account of dissenting architecture in England, from the beginnings to today. The book’s approach is chronological, and it shows that, from the very beginnings it was hard to generalise. The diversity is there from nonconformity’s roots in the 17th century, when one found some groups worshipping in former Catholic churches (dissolved monasteries and priories, for example; even Exeter Cathedral was divided in two and shared between Presbyterians and Independents) and others building simple, often domestic-looking places of worship for themselves.

In the period from the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689 to the mid-18th century, chapels start to become more architecturally assured, impressive, and distinctive. Given the general importance of the Bible and the sermon in nonconformity, it’s not surprising that Wakeling finds buildings influenced by the Georgian ‘preaching boxes’ of the Church of England. But his book also shows that the dissenters were much more adventurous with plan forms, especially towards the mid-18th century as the influence of preachers like John Wesley took hold – Chapels of England singles out some impressive octagonal and oval buildings.

Methodism’s great age of the late-18th and early-19th century has its own chapter, chronicling a time when rising populations and vigorous preaching led to many new chapels, including some outstanding large ones. Growth was especially strong in the Regency and early Victorian periods, by which time the first specialist architects of chapels, men like William Jenkins, James Fenton, and James Simpson, had emerged. Wakeling notes a variety of designs, with a trend towards Greek revival yielding in part to the rise of Gothic designs (the great classifier of Gothic styles, Thomas Rickman, was a Quaker). But the author is at pains to stress that it was not simply a question of the Gothic fashion taking over in the Victorian period: the picture was always one of stylistic diversity, within denominations and across the whole field. 

And so the story continues through the period of continued renewal in the later 19th century, when one could find monster Classical town chapels, tiny Gothic wayside chapels, and Gothic town chapels that looked like Medieval churches being erected at the same time. By the end of the century an Arts and Crafts influenced style had been added to the mix, especially in suburbs and Garden Cities. By the time of World War I, it was evident that many of these structures were major buildings, and nonconformist architecture was being taken seriously in books like Joseph Crouch’s Puritanism and Art. 

Christopher Wakeling’s fine book, lavishly illustrated, clearly written, and underpinned by deep research, brings the story up to date, with a good selection of 20th-century chapels in styles from expressionistic Gothic to modernist. It does an excellent job of bringing all these buildings and the religious motivation for constructing them to life, illustrating their best points, and delineating some sort of pattern to the complex story of nonconformist architecture, a story that is also one of heterodoxy and variety.

Chadlington, Oxfordshire

Word and worship

This is the archetypal form of nonconformist chapel: a pair of round-headed windows on either side of a central door, a hipped roof, and, sometimes, quoins and window-surrounds picked out in dressed stone to make the building look more substantial and important. It’s a form that was created in the 18th century, but was still in use well into the Victorian period, by which time thousands of towns and villages had at least one chapel or meeting house belonging to the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, or Quakers.

In rural areas, many of these places of worship never had large congregations, and thousands of them have fallen out of use to be demolished or, like this one, to benefit from sympathetic conversion. It’s good to see this example preserved because it’s a small local landmark and because, like so many of these small buildings, it is both typical and different. Typical because of the windows, hipped roof, and so on. Different because it’s built of local stone rather than the brick so often favoured for country chapels.


And also because of the inscription. Often on chapels there is a rectangular date stone above the door that gives the name and date of foundation. Here the builders inscribed the date over the door and the purpose of the building in elegant capitals along the string course. It’s nicely carved if slightly rustic work (look for the slight difference in the two Ps, for example). But it also has real vigour. I especially like the kicking angled serifs at the top of the S and C. In letter-cutting on inscriptions, date stones, and gravestones the Victorian nonconformist churches often employed craft workers of great skill and sensitivity. Their typography and printing – on items such as circuit preaching plans and the small tickets with Biblical texts handed out at Sunday schools – was often very good too. As ever for the dissenters, what mattered was the word.

* * *

Thanks to Emma Bradford for telling me about this building.

Cote, Oxfordshire

Rural restraint

In around 1703, a group of Baptists from Longworth near Kingston Bagpuize in Oxfordshire acquired some land across the Thames at Cote and built a new chapel there. A few decades later, probably during the 1750s, they enlarged the chapel to create this lovely building with its symmetrical front (the bush conceals a second doorway), plain window openings, and truncated gable.

This building marks what I think of as the second phase of nonconformist worship in England. In the 17th century it had been against the law for dissenters from the Church of England to gather in their own places of worship. They could face penalties both for not attending church and for holding illegal meetings of their own. As a result, nonconformists met in studied obscurity – in people’s houses in isolated country spots and in obscure town buildings up quiet alleys.

In 1689 the Toleration Act granted certain non-Anglicans the right to assemble for worship under certain conditions – they had to register their places of worship, swear allegiance to the monarch (this ruled out Quakers, who swear no oaths, from the benefits of the Act), and to reject the doctrine of transubstantiation (this ruled out Catholics). The Act meant that Protestant groups such as the Baptists could worship more publicly, and build proper chapels for themselves. Hence buildings like this one.

John Piper thought the chapel at Cote one of the most beautiful buildings in Oxfordshire. I suspect that he liked, as I do, its combination of local materials and chaste symmetry – there’s a very English restraint about it, as there is about many early chapels. The setting is delightful too, amongst trees and headstones, some of which go back to the 18th century to remind us of the first Baptists who came here and raised this simple, fitting building amongst the fields and farms.

Bishop's Itchington, Warwickshire

Here's another nonconformist chapel, this time converted to a house. Unlike the one at Duntisbourne Abbots in the previous post, this Independent Chapel is built in brick and has pointed Gothic lancet windows. Brick, cheap and unpretentious, was often used to build dissenting chapels, and this humble material was often looked down on by Victorian Anglicans, who preferred their churches made of stone. Stone – worked by craftsmen and adorned with carving – was seen as the building material that had the highest status; brick came a poor second. But you'd have to be hard-hearted to look down on this lovely speckled Warwickshire brickwork. In addition, again in contrast to Duntisbourne Abbots, this chapel's date stone has been preserved in situ, revealing something of the building's history to passers-by.

Duntisbourne Abbots, Gloucestershire

There used to be thousands of nonconformist chapels and meeting houses dotted around the country. Even a small village sometimes had two, and they could be tiny buildings, put up and maintained by a sparse congregation of Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, or others whose beliefs compelled them to worship separately from the established Church of England or the old Catholic Church. As congregations have declined or disappeared, many of these chapels have been demolished. But some survive.

Nonconformist chapels are at once among the most simple and most satisfying English buildings – simple because dissenters, with their Word-centred faith, tended to shun elaborate decoration and iconography, and so believed that there were better things to spend their sometimes limited money on than lavish fittings or statuary. So a small village chapel, like this one in the Cotswolds, often had this kind of simple frontage, with two tall windows and a door – and often a date stone above the door. Here, renewed stonework marks the place where the date stone was once set.

How can chapels survive where there are no longer worshippers enough to use and maintain them? Some have been converted to houses, with mixed results – a sensitive conversion can retain original features and create an inspiring living space. Some are village halls or other places of assembly, a use that can work well. A few are in industrial hands, again with varied success.

This one seems to be a double garage, the unlovely up-and-over door inserted at the East end. This is hardly an ideal solution – to some it will look like desecration. But at least most of the fabric of the building has been preserved – apart from this end wall and the vanished date stone there appear to be few other exterior modifications. At least the building is being used and what’s left of it is being maintained, and this unusual role is better than demolition. One hopes that one day some more appropriate use will come along.