Patrick Comerford
When I was looking at a number of chapels and churches in Buckingham in the ‘nonconformist’ tradition – including the Salvation Army hall on Moreton Road, the former Congregational Church in the Radcliffe Centre on Church Street and the Well Street United Church – I missed photographing the ‘Old Meeting House’, a former Independent or Congregational chapel at 3 Well Street, dating back to the early 18th century.
For many years, the building survived as an old-style garage. But rhe premises had remained vacant for about 30 years or more until a number of successive but failed efforts to run restaurants, wine bars and coffee shops.
Throughout all those changes over the decades, the old pumps with their ‘retro’ casings have remained in place on the footpath outside the former garage. When I first saw them, they brought back childhood memories of Lehane’s garage in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, which I recalled in an interview with The Guardian back in 2018.
I promised myself in a blog posting on Sunday afternoon (16 November 2025) that I would have another look at the building, and so I went back to see it again yesterday (17 November 2025).
The former nonconformist chapel or meeting house was built almost 300 years ago in 1726, and it was enlarged in the early 19th century and altered at different times in the 20th century. It was first built as a Meeting House or chapel for the Presbyterian congregation in Buckingham. The congregation was formed ca 1700, and they were the heirs of the Puritan tradition of the previous century. Later they became Independents or Congregationalists.
The members of the Well Street chapel were torn apart by a schism in 1792, and a number of them left to form their own chapel in Church Street. By 1850, the two groups reunited, and in 1857 they built a new Congregational Church on Church Street.
Many of the fittings in the Old Meeting House were moved to the new chapel moved to the new building on Church Street, including a wall monument to the Revd Enoch Barling, minister in 1818-1832.
The Old Meeting House housed Buckingham’s British School from 1844 to 1876, and the Salvation Army used it as their citadel until they moved to Moreton Road in 1916. Its last religious use was as a meeting house for the Plymouth Brethren, who met on the upper floor.
The old meeting house or chapel is built in red brick in Flemish bond with limestone dressings at the front, a body of coursed limestone rubble, and hipped plain-tile roofs concealed by a parapet at the front. It is a two-storey building with a three-window front and was built on a rectangular plan.
In the 20th century, a wide central garage entrance was installed at ground-floor level, with double-leaf doors. During the refurbishment, the building retained the two windows that replaced the original twinned entrance doors of the Old Meeting House, with their round-arched heads and the raised stone surrounds with imposts. There are also small, leaded panes in the heads in a fanlight pattern.
There is a three-light window and below it a stepped stone sill. The sill of the window to the right has been cut by a 20th century door, approached by three stone steps. The first floor windows have small, leaded panes and raised stone surrounds with segmental-arched heads, key blocks and stepped stone sills. The building also has a partly rendered coursed and squared limestone plinth.
The central bay breaks forward slightly and has a stepped stone first-floor string course, with full-height brick pilaster strips at either end, and there is a hollow-chamfered stone cornice and a stone-coped parapet.
Although I did not see inside the building yesterday, I understand the interior has been divided horizontally with a floor that incorporates remains of the meeting gallery round three sides, and the building still has an early 19th century former gallery staircase, and that the roof structure of original core survives complete.
Howard Rogers (1900-1956) from Fringford was the first owner of Well Street Garage. Bert Shorey of the North Bar Garage in Banbury bought the Well Street Garage and bicycle shop in 1961, along with the fuel contract for the petrol pumps.
Bert ran two garages, while Dan Shorey was a semi-professional motorcycle racer in the summer months, doing the ‘Continental Circus’ of Grand Prix racing. Part of the success of the garage in attracting a specialist clientele was its proximity to Silverstone, near Towcester, and also the popularity of the Isle of Man TT races in the 1960s.
Well Street Garage closed around the 1980s, and it remained empty for 30 years or more, although the Cleveland-style globes remain on top of the casings of the petrol pumps. The building Grade 2 listed building was kept in a moth-balled state and it is said it became a financial burden on successive owners as they tried to save it from falling to the point of ruin and collapse.
The former chapel and garage was eventually bought in 2016 and refurbished as a restaurant and wine bar, known as the Garage. Unfortunately, the restaurant and wine bar did not survive the Covid period, and closed in 2020. A second restaurant there came to an end after 12 months or so in September 2021. It reopened as Black Goo, a coffee bar and restaurant, in May 2022, but it too closed in August 2023.
Today, the former meeting house or chapel is the Studio, an independent dancewear shop specialising in pointe shoe fittings, and the offices of AW Architectural Design. The casings of the vintage petrol pumps can still be seen outside, and the twin doors that were once the separate men’s and women’s entrances to the 18th century chapel can still be seen.
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