Smethwick Regent Street Primitive Methodist chapel

Smethwick Regent Street Primitive Methodist chapel was opened in 1887; it is a building in an Italian Romanesque style, built of of brick, stone, and stucco although the external walls have since been painted..  It had a membership of 52 in 1970 but in 2015 carries a For sale notice. There has been no progress by 2018.

The Victoria County History tells us that the early Primitive Methodists, after meeting in a house in Bridge Street, built a chapel in Rolfe Street on the site of the later railway station; the materials were rough stone and cinders and it was known as the Cinder Chapel.

A new chapel holding 100 people was built on the opposite side of the road in 1849. On Census Sunday 1851 it had attendances of 20 in the morning, 30 in the afternoon, and 50 in the evening; there was also a Sunday school.  Numbers increased and a gallery was erected; but the chapel proved too small for special occasions, and for those the railway goods shed was used.

A large chapel with galleries all round was built on an adjoining site in 1873, and the 1849 building became the Sunday school.  By 1886 there were plans for widening Rolfe Street, and the chapel was sold and replaced by the new chapel in Regent Street which opened in 1887.

Reference

Victoria County History accessed through British History online at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol17/pp129-134 on August 8th 2020.