Edithmead, Somerset

Tin tabernacle

As regular readers will know, I’m a great fan and regular user of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England books, to which I refer all the time and which also inspire many of the explorations of English buildings that lie behind this blog. I am in no doubt that the series, with its comprehensive coverage of architecture – first in England and then in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland – is one of the greatest works of art history ever, in any country.* If I have a reservation about the books it’s that, even in the fat revised volumes that are still appearing, they often stop short at even passing coverage the more modest buildings that in many places play a huge part in defining local character – the lookers’ huts of Romney Marsh, maybe, or the hovels of the Vale of Evesham, or plotland bungalows, or minor industrial buildings in some towns.† Or corrugated iron buildings, a personal obsession of mine, even though buildings made of this material are widely seen as minor and often temporary. There are, though, plenty of corrugated iron structures that are vital to their community and that have histories going back over a century.

I was pleased, therefore, when browsing in the Somerset: South and West volume of Pevsner to find a corrugated iron church mentioned at Edithmead, close to Burnham-on-Sea. Recently I was nearby, and stopped to have a look. What I found was a charming, white-painted ‘tin tabernacle’ not especially churchlike in appearance, except for the miniature spire and the bell at one end, but attractive nonetheless. If the rectangular windows and tiny structure without a separate chancel look unecclesiastical, there’s a reason. This building began life on another site, at East Brent, where it was an ‘Adult School’. It was brought to Edithmead in 1919 to serve the small local community as a daughter church to the one in Burnham-on-Sea. The congregation look after it well – although maintenance of a building like this is easier that the upkeep of a stone building; the main jobs recently have, I think, been painting the building and replacing the wooden window frames.

Thanks to the congregation, the tiny church with its modest spirelet and delightful cresting along the ridge of the roof, still looks good and locals were able to celebrate its centenary on the site in 2019. Hats off to the people of Edithmead – and to the authors of the Pevsner guide for pointing me towards a place of which, until the other day, I’d not even heard.

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* The revised volume for Wiltshire is the latest one I’ve acquired, and I plan to review it shortly here.

† All of which may be built in part of corrugated iron.

Halse, Northamptonshire

Flexible, portable, durable

The Northamptonshire town of Brackley is somewhere I’ve visited often, but on my most recent visit I left the town by a route I’d not tried before and soon found myself in Halse, staring at this small corrugated iron church. I knew nothing of its history, but was reminded of others* I’d seen – the Mission Chapel at Halse has an impressive selection of the features – pointed ‘Gothic’ inserts to the rectangular windows, quatrefoil openings, a small spire – that could be fitted to a corrugated iron building in the 19th century to indicate that it was a church.

When I got home I looked online, and found the church’s website.† It tells how in 1885 the curate from Brackley had to walk about a mile to Halse to take services in someone’s dining room. It was thought that the congregation of about 40 people (most of the hamlet’s adult population) deserved a place of worship of their own, and the Earl of Ellesmere bought this building for them in 1900. Apparently he bought it secondhand – it had been a ‘railway community room’ for workers building local railways and had to be taken apart and moved to its present site, demonstrating that these prefabricated buildings are portable and adaptable. One wonders whether the ecclesiastical features were added when it was moved to its current location.

The church is still in use and, after a major repair and restoration program in 1999 it looks in good shape – tin churches were not expected to last 100 years. The direction of the very strong sunlight meant I found it hard to take a photograph that does the church full justice (the spire is lurking in the shadows), but I hope the pattern of corrugations, fence uprights, and green leaves is at least pleasant to the eye.

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* I’ve previously done posts on ‘tin churches’ at Rodley, Coombe Green, Defford and Kilburn, London.

† I am indebted to the website of St Peter’s, Brackley for information about the building’s history.

Button Oak, Shropshire

Changing times, changing materials

Shape and form are of the essence of architecture. They’re a huge part of what gives a building its character, and some forms can be instantly recognisable from a distance, or in a passing glance. Driving through Wyre Forest northwest of Bewdley, a building at the side of the road caught my eye and one of those recognitions took place. “A tin tabernacle,” I thought, stopping to take a look. But when I walked back and examined the building, I saw walls clad in wood, not corrugated iron. As a dedicated fancier of corrugated iron, I was rather disappointed, but, on reflection, it seemed that the proportions, pointed Gothic windows, little bell turret, and porch were exactly the kind normally seen on Victorian and early-20th century ’tin’ churches: surely this one had started as a corrugated iron building and had been reclad.

According to Ian Smith’s book Tin Tabernacles, this was indeed originally an iron church, erected in 1873 and supplied by S. Dyer, manufacturer of iron churches, of Euston Road, London. Like so many, it was produced in prefabricated form by a specialist firm, who would offer churches with different variations of windows and fittings, and sized to provide the required number of ‘sittings’. This church seats around 60, and was originally built as a mission church, attracting people who worked in Wyre Forest.

Having lasted just over a century, the tin church of St Andrew, Button Oak, was restored in 1975, when the corrugated iron was replaced with cedar boards, and this building, perhaps originally thought of as a temporary structure, has had a new lease of life. The vertical boards have a visual effect similar to the original corrugated iron, as does the later square-section metal sheeting on the roof – an effect close enough to catch my eye, make me stop, and subsequently think about those forest workers, coming to worship here over 140 years ago.

Coombe Green, Worcestershire

On the edge

Last weekend I pulled up and photographed a building I’d been meaning to post for a while, the Mission Room on the edge of the common at Coombe Green in Worcestershire. It seemed to me as I looked at it that I’d better share it with you soon. Many of these “tin churches” are disappearing, and when I see one that’s not in pristine condition, I wonder whether it, too, will be pulled down to make way for something else.

According to a notice in the window, this corrugated-iron church was licensed for worship in 1904. As I looked at it, I wondered whether the original builders thought that it would last more than a hundred years. It’s actually quite a complex building for a tin church – many consist simply of four sides and a roof, perhaps with the addition of a small porch. This one has what looks like a separate chancel, just visible to the left, plus a transept-like extension also on the left, the little store room on the right, and the long porch, its roof held up with a row of rugged tree trunks, that runs along the front. There’s a even a bell turret with a tiny spire-like roof.

These churches were often bought as prefabricated buildings from big suppliers, but this one, with its tree-trunk supports, might be custom-made. That porch gives the building an individual, frontier-town character, something that’s in keeping with this part of Worcestershire – not far away is a house made partly from an old railway carriage and a common with a number of scattered houses, probably put up by their original owners to take advantage of the old law that said that if you could build a house in a single night on a piece of unoccupied land, you gained the right to stay there. Rugged individualism indeed.

Rodley, Gloucestershire

Survivor

Between the 1850s and 1920s, when there was still a growing demand for church buildings but often a limited budget for construction, scores of corrugated iron churches were put up in England and in the farthest outposts of the empire. These buildings were supplied in prefabricated form by commercial companies, some of whom, including Boulton and Paul of Norwich and William Cooper Ltd of London, grew successful in the church market.

It was straightforward for an impoverished parish, or one needing temporary accommodation before a more permanent stone church was built, to find a design in a catalogue and order it up, pricing being based on the size of the congregation (£4 per person seated was not uncommon). The trappings of church architecture – pointed Gothic-style windows, little bell turrets – were included in the price, although plain, shed-like designs, presumably still cheaper, were sometimes chosen for mission halls or chapels.

Few could have expected these buildings to last very long. But this is one of the survivors, down a lane on the western side of the River Severn in Gloucestershire. Tucked away on a quiet corner, its entrance front shaded by encroaching trees, it looks every bit the part, the iron walls set off by the white carpentry of the porch, the single bell still hanging above the doorway. And although many of these buildings were built on a simple rectangular plan, this one even has a polygonal apse at the east end. It small and scattered parish must have been proud of it. They probably still are.