Patrick Comerford
Walsingham was once one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the world and was known as ‘England’s Nazareth’. Since the revival of pilgrimage to Walsingham in the past century or so, the number and variety of churches and chapels in the Norfolk village has grown, and when I was there earlier this month to speak at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage, I visited a dozen or more churches and chapels.
During the first afternoon of this month’s programme, we visited the Methodist Church in Walsingham, where we are being welcomed by Aileen Cox, a lay minister of the Methodist Church. Holy Communion was celebrated there by the Revd Dr Richard Clutterbuck, a former principal of Edgehill Theological College, Belfast, and the preacher was the Revd Dr Mark Rowland, Secretary of the Faith and Order Committee of the Methodist Church.
Catholic pilgrimages to the Slipper Chapel only began after 1897, and Anglican pilgrimages only date from the 1920s with the arrival of Rev Alfred Hope Patten, who started to rebuild the shrine in 1931. So, for over 350 years, Walsingham was what might be descried as a religious backwater without the profile it has today.
In the heartland of English Marianism, where there are places of worship belonging to the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox traditions, it is easy to forget that Methodism was the main Christian tradition in rural Norfolk in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the 1851 census, the majority of Norfolk’s churchgoers were non-conformists, and most of them Methodists.
When John Wesley visited Little Walsingham in 1781, a Methodist society had already been formed in the village two years earlier in 1779, and his visit must have seemed a reward for their energy and enthusiasm.
He recorded in his Journal that he preached in the Common Place at 2 pm on Tuesday 30 October 1781 to a crowd of several thousand people. He then went to see the ruins of the Augustinian priory and Franciscan friary: ‘Had there been a grain of virtue or public spirit in Henry VIII, these noble buildings need not have run to ruin.’
A small Methodist chapel was built in the in Walsingham 1782. This later became two cottages when the present church was built in 1793-1784.
Walsingham was transferred from the huge Lynn Circuit in 1791 to a new circuit headed initially by Wells-next-the-Sea. Its name was changed to the Walsingham Circuit the following year.
A site off the Friday Market at the south end of the High Street, partly on the site of the Franciscan Friary was bought and the foundation stone of a new chapel was laid on 10 June 1793. It was opened on 8 June 1794 by Charles Boon, an itinerant preacher stationed at Great Yarmouth.
It is built of red brick with a pyramid-shaped tiled roof. Its doorway was flanked by two plain columns set beneath an open triangular pediment. The design is typical of early Methodist preaching houses of the period, a large square red-brick box, with an entrance porch and a pretty gallery running around three sides of the interior.
The Victorian central pulpit dominates the simple table with its unusual brass candlesticks. The pews at ground floor level are of a heavy style favoured by the Victorians.
The organ is perched above the entrance, and the gallery is the original one from the 1790s, and still has its original pews. The organ came from the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Walsingham when it closed in the 1930s after the union of the Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist Churches.
The exhibits on display include copies of the original religious licences granted by the bishop in order to register a place of religious worship in both Great Walsingham and Little Walsingham.
The chapel became head of the Wesleyan Methodist Walsingham Circuit in due course and a plan in 1847 of the preaching appointments for the chapel and its 33 daughter churches is on display.
Most of these neighbouring villages also had Primitive Methodist Chapels, together with many other Primitive Chapels where there was no Wesleyan presence. Meanwhile, a Primitive Methodist chapel was also built in Walsingham at Swan Entry in 1849.
The Methodist congregation in Walsingham was divided during the ‘Reform dispute,’ a mid-19th century schism that divided Wesleyan Methodism in 1849-1856, driven by demands to democratise church governance and reduce the power of ordained ministers. The congregation in Walsingham was halved in numbers, and the Wesleyan Reformers bought the former Independent of Congregational chapel in Walsingham in 1868.
The Wesleyan chapel was transferred to the East Dereham Circuit in 1887 and so was no longer head of a circuit. Extensive internal renovations took place in 1888. A new schoolroom was built by Charles Tuthill of Fakenham in 1890, and the name Friars’ Quire is a reminder of the link with the site of the Franciscan Friary.
Methodism in Norfolk was so much affected by the loss of members in the Reform dispute that its circuits were dissolved at the beginning of the 20th century and missions created. Walsingham was placed in the Mid-Norfolk Mission in 1906.
With the amalgamation Methodist traditions in the 1930s, the Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist congregations in Walsingham combined. The final services in the Primitive Methodist chapel were held on 8 October 1933, the chapel was sold and it became a house.
Today, the Methodist Church in Walsingham is the oldest Methodist chapel in East Anglia still in use for its original purpose. Indeed, if we consider Saint Mary’s and All Saints’ Church was thoroughly rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1962, then Walsingham Methodist Chapel might be said to be by far the oldest unaltered place of worship in Little Walsingham.
Although there is no regular Methodist congregation in Walsingham, it is a heritage chapel that is open to visitors on Fridays from April to October, and it also hosts school visits on a year-round basis in conjunction with Anglican Shrine. Short informal services are held on the second Sunday afternoon each month at 4:30 pm, followed by refreshments.
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