Author

Sandy Calder

Date

Thesis submitted 2012

Project Type

PhD

Subject

Religious History

Datasets

Ordnance Survey County Series (1846-1969)

Related Subjects

Social and Economic History; Social Geography; 18th-19th Century; Britain and Ireland

Sources: Digimap

Publishing Institution

The Open University

Summary

The orthodox view of the Primitive Methodist chapel estate is that it reflected its followers’ financial circumstances: the movement was initially a bastion of cottage worship, and this had left a legacy of chapels that were smaller and cheaper than those of its competitors. Yet this did not appear to be the case in South-West Cheshire. Its early rural chapels – the bulk of those that survive – were neither smaller nor less well-built than those of its contemporary rural competitors, and were often built very early in the congregation’s existence.  A more rigorous examination was called for in case this was a local exception. 

Aims & Objectives

The initial goal was to create descriptive maps that would compare and contrast the networks of Primitive Methodist and competitor chapels in the same geographic areas. This however proved both cumbersome and less useful than had been imagined: the resulting images were arresting but rather ambiguous. Instead, the maps were used to track down more specific NGRs for the many chapels and cottage venues that were imprecisely defined in the 1851 Census or elsewhere.

Methodology

The three counties in the sample were selected because (a) each had a significant PM presence by 1851; (b) their Religious Census returns had been accurately transcribed, thus providing a reliable database of outlets; and (c) they exhibited a range of outlet and community types.  First series maps proved useful in resolving ambiguous locations, particularly for chapels that had entirely disappeared. The result was a number of datasets of eight-digit NGRs for religious outlets from which a propinquity distribution could be calculated. PM spreadsheets were generated for each of the three counties, and in addition for the Wesleyans in Derbyshire, and both mean intervals to nearest neighbour and clustering incidence were calculated by use of Pythagoras.

Results/Outcome

The network of PM chapels and other venues proved to be consistently different from those of its competitors. The most numerous Nonconformist outlets in these counties were PM and Wesleyan, and the PM outlets were often closer to their neighbours than those of the Wesleyans. This was equally true of dedicated chapels and cottages; and cottage venues close to dedicated chapels often continued in use even after the latter had been built.  This was counter-intuitive: if poverty accounted for the chapel network, dedicated and cottage venues should be distributed differently; the increased operational burden of maintaining cottage venues close to dedicated chapels should have led to the former’s consequent closure; and the higher unit cost of two small chapels should have produced consolidation into fewer larger venues. None of these happened: cottage venues survived, and small outlets continued to be built, close to existing larger chapels; and on Census Sunday, it was typically the small venues that were crowded, while the larger dedicated chapels were sometimes half-empty. This was an affordable expression of bottom-up preference, not top-down policy.

References & Acknowledgements

Further sources of information used in the research:

• Transcriptions of the 1851 Religious Census for Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Shropshire
• OS Get-a-Map (for surviving identified venues)
• Various specialist church and chapel collectors’ websites, which often provided accurate national grid references (NGRs) for surviving but closed chapels:
• • The Churches of Britain and Ireland  (http://churches-uk-ireland.org/)
  • Genuki database of UK and Irish churches (http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/churchdb/)
  • Shropshire’s Nonconformist Chapels (http://www.users.waitrose.com/~coxfamily/)

Ellerdine Heath Wesleyan Chapel, Shropshire, 1814, as extended 1830s

(Image and text © Copyright AJC 2008)

Note: This chapel and Englesea Brook PM chapel (far right image) were both extended to accommodate a gallery. However, unlike the latter, it is plain that the above was extended with a view to minimising the budget, with no thought to appearances.

Tiverton PM chapel, Cheshire, 1864

(Image and text © Copyright AJC 2008)

Englesea Brook PM Chapel, Cheshire 1828, as extended 1832

(Image and text © Copyright AJC 2007)

Note: The right-hand extension is a schoolroom dating from 1914.