Whitby; Church Street Primitive Methodist Chapel
3rd Chapel, built 1903, thanks to 'devoted women'
The first Primitive Methodist Chapel in Church Street was built in 1821, at a cost of £1,000. A Sunday School was added in 1835.
It was rebuilt and enlarged in 1841. In 1890 this Chapel was described as ‘a plain, barn-like building, with sitting accommodation for 650. In it is a neat marble tablet to Sarah Margaret, wife of John Buchannan Esq., who died in 1837.
A third Chapel, designed by Architect, W.G. Smithson in 1902, was built in 1903, presumably on the same site, at a cost of £4,150, and seated 500. The Church closed in 1968, and is now a Thai restaurant.
There is still a plaque inside the restaurant: ‘Sacred to the memory of the devoted women who toiled hard and long to obtain funds for the building of this Church’.
Mrs Clifford
Mrs Gray
Mrs Benson
Mrs Bowron
Mrs Wrightson
Mrs Cariss
Mrs Langley
Mrs Robson
Mrs Oliphant
Mrs Smithson
Mrs Harland
Mrs Anderson
Mrs Frankland
Miss Trowsdale
Miss Langley
In the former gallery, which has now been made into an upper floor, and is used as a store room, there are some beautiful wall and ceiling paintings. They are very unusual to find in a Chapel, and may date from after it closed. Does anyone know the story of these paintings?
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The 1903 Primitive Methodist magazine (page 753) reports the opening of the “new and handsome building on the main street of the old town”. It was a distinct improvement – ” the old chapel was badly situated, indeed it is probable that hardly any other town , save Whitby, with its high cliffs, could have offered a site for a chapel so difficult to reach.”
Ceiling paintings were produced by Don Crampton who resided there until he died. He was a lover of artwork. Whether he did them himself or commissioned them I’m unsure, but he was an artist of sorts and once worked for a Leeds newspaper creating cartoons and caricatures.
The Return for the ‘rebuilt and enlarged’ chapel of 1841 to The Census of Religious Worship, 1851 (TNA HO129/531/2/2/11) was completed by Robert Goodwill, a Stonemason who lived in Church Street. It could accommodate 1,000 people and on Census Sunday attendances were Morning: 201, Afternoon: 508, Evening 806. There were 101 Sunday School scholars in the morning and 102 in the afternoon.
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