Patrick Comerford
My mains hopes in visiting Dunstable last week were to see Saint Peter’s Priory Church, the mediaeval Church of England parish church dating back to the foundation of an Augustinian Priory in the early 12th century, and Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, a listed building that typifies the approach of the architect Desmond Williams to sacred and liturgical space.
But there were other churches to see too, including the Methodist Church on High Street South, Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Marys Gate, and Christ Church, West Street, built as a Baptist chapel but now part of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.
The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was designed by GE Withers in 1909 and built in a ‘free Gothic’ style with a tall spire. The church is listed at Grade II because it illustrates the importance of Methodist worship in Dunstable in the early 20th century, for the quality of its design and for the completeness of the interior fittings including the gallery, bench pews and rostrum.
Methodists in Dunstable owe their origins to John Darley, a local carpenter and joiner who, when he was visiting Nottingham, went to the nearby market town of Bingham to hear John Wesley preach on 30 July 1770.
Wesley preached a powerful sermon resulting in John Darley’s conversion and he returned to Dunstable a changed man. Darley and others applied to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1797 for a license to register Thomas Summerfield’s house as a place of worship. Darley opened his own workshop in Church Street in 1812, inviting people to sing, pray and read the Bible.
The church is the third Methodist chapel on the site. The first Methodist chapel in Dunstable was built in 1831 but burned down in 1844 in an incendiary attack on adjoining farm buildings. It was rebuilt in 1845, and was enlarged in 1853, with an extra wing to accommodate 500 people, a Wesleyan day school at the back with 450 children attending on a regular basis, and a library.
Disaster struck again in September 1908 when the second chapel was also burned down. How this fire started remains unknown but there had been a number of incendiary outbreaks in the area that summer. The Methodists pushed on with plans for a new church on a grand scale, with a spire that would be seen for miles around.
The foundation stone of the third church was laid on 31 May 1909 and it opened in December 1909 with an overflowing congregation when the Revd Dr John Scott Lidgett preached.
George Edward Withers (1873-1945) of Withers and Meredith specialised in designing nonconformist chapels. He had designed Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church in 1905 when he was commissioned to design a new church in Dunstable. It opened in 1909 and the organ was installed in 1910.
The church is oriented from north-east to south-west and is roughly cruciform with a wide nave, with an offset tower at the north-east corner. The church is built of buff-coloured brick in English bond with Bath stone dressings and with plain tile roofs. It was built with a nave, galleried north and south aisles, a gallery that continues around the geographical east end, a rostrum at the geographical west end, with a gallery behind, and a ‘chancel’ at the geographical west.
The entrance at the east end is flanked by a squat north-east tower with embattled corner piers and a south-east tower with diagonal buttresses and an octagonal belfry steeple above. The east end has a large five-light window with reticulated tracery, a moulded four-centred arch and flanking four-centred arch lancets with buttresses rising between. The north and south elevations have gabled transepts and reticulated tracery in cambered arches.
Inside, there is an open timber roof structure. The interior still has its complete original set of pitch-pine furnishings, including galleries with tiered bench seating and benches in the transepts, aisles and nave. The walls are plastered. There is a four- centred domed arch above the ‘high’ end containing an organ loft and beneath it a rostrum and communion rail. The organ, installed in 1910, is flanked by lancet windows holding commemorative stained glass.
The transepts have four-bay four-centred arch arcades with slender polygonal piers with foliated capitals. The gallery cuts through the arcades and is curved around the east end.
Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, the Square Methodist Church continued to evolve as a place of witness and worship in the town. The church completed a building project in September 2009 that opened up the front of the church and improved access and the welcome area. The main hall at the rear has separate access and is used for community events, jumble sales, coffee mornings, a drama group and market traders on Saturdays.
Two other churches in Dunstable have roots in the Baptist tradition: Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Mary’s Gate and Christ Church, West Street.
Baptist roots in the Dunstable area date back to Kensworth in 1652. William Brittan, a local leader, who had oversight in 1694, was instrumental in forming the first Baptist communities by leading meetings in homes in Dunstable and Houghton. The Baptist movement in the Dunstable area has two distinct historical streams: Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate, formerly Saint Mary’s Street, and Christ Church on West Street.
Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate describes itself as ‘a Grace Baptist Church who believe the Bible’ and traces its origins back over 350 years to 17th century nonconformist groups in Kensworth and Thorn. It was part of the ‘Strict Baptist’ tradition in Dunstable with roots dating back to the early 1700s. This was known as the Old Baptist Church as it belonged to an older religious group known as the Particular Baptists.
A piece of land in Saint Mary’s Street was bought by the spiritual heirs of John Bumyan in 1708 to build a meeting house. The Bunyan Meeting House or Old Baptist Chapel was enlarged in 1807 to twice its original size and a Sunday School was founded. But it was demolished after a violent storm severely damaged the chapel in 1849.
The present church was built in 1849, with a capacity for 400 people. It has been Grade II listed as a rare and exceptionally preserved example of mid-19th century nonconformist architecture, complete with its original gallery, box pew, and pulpit.
The other church in the Baptist tradition Dunstable is the former Baptist Church or chapel on West Street, now known as Christ Church Dunstable. It was founded by the General Baptists and built in 1847 to seat 700 people and used as a church and pa art-time school.
The church was built in red brick and stucco with a central pediment. It has two storeys, three arched windows that are round headed on the first floor and segmental on the ground floor. There are quoins, a slightly recessed centre and windows recessed in panels. Three central doors, each two-fold with 10 panels, are flanked by pilasters under consoles, cornice hood.
The church also took over what was the Plume of Feathers pub, and has turned it into a community coffee shop and advice centre.
I missed seeing the United Reform Church in Edward Street, which was once a school hall attached to the Congregational Church, which stood next to it until the 1980s. In addition, the Salvation Army, which came to Dunstable in 1885, has a building on Bull Pond Lane, one of the oldest lanes in Dunstable. There are many other churches, church sites and former churches for me to see. Hopefully, though, the summer is long enough for that.
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