Reading London Street Primitive Methodist chapel

Reading, London Street PM Chapel, 15.10.2015

GW Oxley

Reading London Street Primitive Methodist chapel

Keith Guyler 1993

Reading, London Street Primitive Methodist chapel

Handbook of the Primitive Methodist Conference 1915; Englesea Brook Museum

interior of Reading, London Street Primitive Methodist chapel

Handbook of the Primitive Methodist Conference 1915; Englesea Brook Museum

Commemorative bread plate, inscribed London Street Methodist church. There is a former Prim chapel at London Street, Reading, which is near where the lady who owned it lived. Is that it?

Alison Butler

There were at least 5 Primitive Methodist chapels in Reading:

• Beecham Road;
• Ebenezer Cumberland Road;
• Friar Street;
• London Street;
• Wokingham Road.

The impressive chapel in London Street seated 850 people when purchased in 1866.  It was a replacement for the first chapel called Salem in Minster Street.

It closed in 1940 and was subsequently used by a local newspaper and as a cinema before becoming the Reading Business Centre at the time of Keith Guyler’s photograph.  On Google Street View in 2014 it is Great Expectations hotel and bar.  So much for temperance!  It is located in London Street rather than the current London Road.