Former Primitive Methodist Chapel, Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire
When I took my Humber Heritage (September 5th-9th 2016) group to the Wilderspin National School at Barton-on-Humber we were among the first to see the current restoration of the Primitive Methodist Chapel next door to the school.
The Primitive Methodists were a break-away group that followed a simpler, more frugal style of worship than the Wesleyans. They have a reputation for plain, unostentatious buildings but the Barton-on-Humber example is relatively grand.
It was built, with its associated Sunday School, in eight months flat in 1867 in polychrome brick to the Romanesque designs of Joseph Wright (1818-1885).
Joseph Wright was a prolific architect of Primitive Methodist chapels and a pupil of Cuthbert Brodrick, the Hull-born architect of Leeds Town Hall and the Grand Hotel, Scarborough. At the time Barton belonged within the Hull circuit of its denomination.
The existing house next door, No 2 Queen Street, was adapted for the chapel caretaker after it had been shortened to make way for the new chapel by removing the left-hand bay.
For their outlay of £1,500 the Barton Primitive Methodists got an imposing building with an impressive galleried interior, seating six hundred.
It was arguably as impressive as the Wesleyans’ Trinity Methodist Chapel of 1861 on Chapel Lane: it dominates the National School next door and holds up alongside the surrounding public buildings on Queen Street, the Temperance Hall (1843) opposite, the Oddfellows’ Hall (1864) on the corner and the Police Station (1847) round the corner on High Street.
Twenty-two years after the opening, the congregation ordered an elaborate organ by the Hull manufacturer Forster & Andrews. This was sold in the early 1960s to St Andrew’s Parish Church, Immingham; it moved on in 1996 to All Saints’ parish church, Pickwell, Leicestershire.
Most of the disparate branches of Methodism united in 1932, and the Barton-on-Humber congregations joined together in the Trinity Methodist building in 1960.
The Primitive Methodist chapel closed after Easter Day 1961, and it was sold to the Salvation Army, which reopened it on May 22nd 1965. They inserted a floor at gallery level and removed the ground-floor pews. Most of the gallery pews, the fine plaster ceiling and the round arch that framed the organ case remained.
Latterly the Queen Street School Preservation Trust, owners of the Wilderspin National School, has taken over the chapel building as an extension of their premises.
The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing. To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.