Published: Thursday, 22nd May, 2008 08:00
Church picture is a shadow of drawings
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THE architect’s drawing in 1933 of a very large and ambitious church and school in Lower Whitley, for the Methodists, published in this column on March 27, has brought in some interesting information, and a photograph.
Thanks are due to everyone who wrote in, emailed, or came to see me.
The Bourne Memorial Chapel, in Exbourne Road, was pretty obviously the result of the 1933 scheme. I assume it was coincidence that resulted in a chapel dedicated to Hugh Bourne, one of the founders of Primitive Methodism, being in a road named after a village near Okehampton called Exbourne, since so many street names on the Whitley estate have Devonshire origins.
The church was opened in 1948, and stood opposite Geoffrey Field School. According to one of my informants, it came about as the result of a land exchange between the Methodist Church and the borough council.
In exchange for the former Primitive Methodist Chapel in London Street (now Great Expectations), the council gave the land in Exbourne Road for the new Methodist chapel. The building in London Street became, for a while, the Everyman Theatre.
As suggested by the architect’s drawing, the buildings in Exbourne Road were to be built in two stages – but only the first stage was ever built. This comprised an assembly room and vestry, and accommodation for the minister.
The land earmarked for the church proper was used as a playing field.
Members of the congregation were encouraged to buy bricks for the church, but it never came about.
For twenty years and more, the church was thriving – more than 400 children attended the Sunday School, and they had a women’s meeting, mother and toddler groups, boys’ and girls’ brigades, a football team, a band, and so on.
The official history of the Reading and Silchester Methodist Circuit says: “No one really knows why Bourne did not succeed, but people stopped coming, and the vandals took over. Sadly, the end came in 1980, but one feels that the church ought to be present in such areas.”
Looking at the photograph of what was actually built, taken in 1981 after the church had closed and been boarded up, you can see that it owes something to the ambitious plans of 1933.
They have the projecting entrance porch and the buttresses between the windows at least in common. But what was built was much smaller, with flat roofs.
My correspondent thought that the flat roofs might well be on account of the scarcity of timber to make roof trusses after the war.
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