Patrick Comerford
I have written on this blog over the years about many of the churches in Lichfield. But one building I have missed is the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses on Lombard Street. It is a modern, 1980s-looking building, set back a little from the street front, and is easy to miss at times unless you lookcarefully. But the site dates back more than two centuries, and the first Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Lichfield was built there 210 years ago, in 1814.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have met in Lichfield since at least 1956, according to a report in the Lichfield Mercury that year. Their Kingdom Hall in Lombard Street, registered in 1980, occupies the site of the former Wesleyan Methodist chapel, and I had anoher look at in the weeks before Christmas.
John Wesley passed through or near Lichfield three time – in 1755, 1756, and again in 1777 – but he never preached there, and Methodism was late in arriving in Lichfield.
A house at Gallows Wharf, where the London Road crossed the Wyrley and Essington Canal, was registered for worship by dissenters in 1811. The evidence suggests it was almost certainly being used by Wesleyan Methodists: the registration was witnessed by Joshua Kidger (1775-1861), the wharf manager, and he registered a Wesleyan chapel in Lombard Street in 1813.
That chapel, on the south side of Lombard Street, was built in 1814, and was opened by Dr Adam Clarke. The early trustees were William Kidger, William Hawkins, James Mason, John Knight, James Burton, John Hawkins, Joshua Kidger, James Sharp, Samuel Shakespeare. Henry Hawkins, Samuel Watton and John Woodward.
An early minister there was Joshua Kidger’s nephew, John Kidger (1795-1825) from Belton, near Ashby-le-Zouche in Leicestershire. He was 17 when he was converted at a Methodist rally in 1812.
John Kidger ministered in Lichfield between 1815 and 1818. But he was described by a contemporary as not having ‘acquired a very extensive and accurate knowledge of Christian doctrine, and therefore was less capable of encountering the sophisms of those who wrest the Scriptures to their own serious injury.’ He eventually withdrew from ministry, returned to Leicestershire, and died of scarlet fever at the age of 29 in 1825.
In the early days, the Wesleyan choir and congregation in Lombard Street sang to the accompaniment of a string band. A Sunday school had been established by 1823.
The congregation was served by ministers from neighbouring circuits in 1826, and this was still the practice in the earlier 1840s.
On Census Sunday 1851, there were attendances of 22 in the morning and 41 in the evening, with 51 Sunday school children in the morning. It was said that during the winter months the evening congregation numbered up to 130 people.
Lichfield was part of the Burton upon Trent Circuit until 1886, when the Tamworth and Lichfield Circuit was formed. This became two separate circuits in 1947, but was reunited in 1989.
A new Methodist church in Tamworth Street, Lichfield, was designed by Thomas Guest of Birmingham. It opened in Tamworth Street in 1892 and remains in use today. The former chapel was used as the Sunday school until 1902, when a school was built behind the Tamworth Street chapel.
The former chapel building on Lombard Street has been much changed since that time. From 1921 to 1979, the building was used by the Lichfield Afternoon Women’s Institute.
The land in front of the building was used as a Methodist burial ground in early Victorian times. This was eventually deconsecrated and before the building was transferred to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the burials were removed, under the direction of the Revd WNJ Hutchens, the Methodist minister in Lichfield from 1972 to 1980, possibly to Saint Chad’s Churchyard in Lichfield.
The former Wesleyan Methodist chapel on Tamworth Street was sold to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1980, and it is now their Kingdom Hall.
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