Settle Commercial Road Ebenezer Primitive Methodist Chapel. Yorkshire
Grid ref 822634
Ebenezer Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in 1841. In 1851 it provided 100 free and 100 other sittings. This is an excellent example of the “cottage” style which seems to have been the norm for chapels built in the Pennine region before about 1860. Was one of the attractions the fact that the building could be readily converted into a dwelling if no longer needed? This is what has happened here, probably after the new chapel was built in Skipton Road.
Sources
The National Archives HO129/488/2/6/15 1851 ecclesiastical census
Site visit 24.02.2018
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In the accounts of chapel openings in the early Primitive Methodist magazine I have read on more than one occasion the strategy of having an alternative use for a new chapel (usually as a cottage). Many chapels opened with sizeable debts and the Prim societies wanted to hedge their bets.
In the 1851 Religious Census, the minister, David Kent, tells us that the average attendance was 100 in the afternoons and 150 in the evenings. The afternoon Sunday School had an average attendance of 100.
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