Patrick Comerford
The former Methodist church in the centre of Tamworth, the Central Methodist Church in Aldergate, closed four years ago, after its last service on Sunday 22 May 2022. When it went for sale at auction a year later (18 May 2023), many fears among local people in Tamworth about the future for the building. The Victorian chapel, with a Gothic-style street frontage, had a guide price of over £150,000.
But now it appears that the church has been saved is going to continue in use as a church having been acquired by the Mar Thoma Church. Hermon Mar Thoma Church is based in Birmingham and its liturgy and services are in the tradition of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar.
The Mar Thoma Church is in formal ‘full communion’ with the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England, the Church of Ireland and the Episcopal Church in the US, with mutual recognition of each other's sacraments and full interchangeably of clergy.
In many places, Mar Thoma parishes have the endorsement of local Anglican bishops, and the theology of the Mar Thoma Church is close to Anglican traditions while maintaining Eastern liturgical heritage. It uses a reformed variant of the West Syriac Rite Divine Liturgy of Saint James, translated into Malayalam.
The Mar Thoma Church sees itself as continuation of the Saint Thomas Christians, a community traditionally believed to have been founded in the first century by Saint Thomas the Apostle, who is known as Mar Thoma n Syriac. The church describes itself as ‘Apostolic in origin, Universal in nature, Biblical in faith, Evangelical in principle, Ecumenical in outlook, Oriental in worship, Democratic in function, and Episcopal in character’.
Hermon Mar Thoma Church, Midlands, is a parish of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, and held its first services in 1996. The church grew with the arrival of a new group of Diaspora Indians in the UK in 2002, including doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals. A Midlands prayer group was formed in 2004 and it became a congregation in 2006 and later given the status of a parish church.
Hermon Mar Thoma Church was formed in May 2007. The present vicar is the Revd Saju Chacko, and there are five area prayer groups: Birmingham and Solihull; Coventry, Warwick and Nuneaton; Walsall, Wolverhampton and Stafford; Leicester; Nottingham, Derby and Burton on Trent.
The former Central Methodist Church on the west side of Aldergate, between St John’s Street and Lichfield Street, was one of 184 lots at Bond Wolfe’s auction on 18 May 2023. Ian Tudor of Bond Wolfe said at the time of the sale: ‘This former church … has been an important focal point for Tamworth for more than 130 years.’ He said the property was ‘suitable for a wide variety of alternative uses, subject to planning permission.’
The last service was held at the Central Methodist Church in Aldergate, Tamworth, on Sunday 22 May 2022, and the church building, which started life in Tamworth in 1886, closed. A decision has been taken to refocus the congregation on the 1960s building of Saint Andrew's Methodist Church in Thackeray Drive, Leyfields, now known as New Life Methodist Church.
The decision to close the church has left the town centre in Tamworth without a Methodist congregation or building for the first time since Methodism began in the 18th century.
The Methodist Church in Aldergate dated from a split that divided Tamworth’s Methodists in the mid-19th century. A new group was formed calling itself the Wesleyan Reformers and later the Free Methodists. When they left the Bolebridge Street Chapel, they met in a room nearby before acquiring a room in Aldergate that was known as ‘The Hut.’
By the late 19th century, the Free Methodists realised that the Hut did not meet the needs of a growing congregation. They bought a plot of land in Aldergate for £250. The memorial stones were laid at Easter 1886, and the building was completed late that summer, with a spire. The Gothic-style building cost £2,250 and opened for worship on 29 September 1886.
The Free Methodists became part of the United Methodists in 1907. In 1933, the United, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist Churches became one Methodist Church, but it was many years before this became a reality in Tamworth. Meanwhile, the original spire was removed in the 1950s.
When they were joined by the Victoria Street Methodists in 1972, the new congregation in Aldergate became known as the Central Methodist Church.
But the premises in Aldergate were inadequate for the needs of the new congregation. It was impossible to extend laterally so it was decided to extend vertically, and a large part of the cost was met by grants from the Joseph Rank Benevolent Trust.
The church reopened on 16 September 1978. The front of the building was originally single storey. A mezzanine floor was added in the 1970s resulting in two storeys, while at the rear the original two-storey section was once used as school rooms. At the time of sale, the accommodation included a lobby, a vestry, a lower school room, a meeting room, two kitchens and toilets on the ground floor, a landing, the main worship room and an upper school room on the first floor.
The Central Methodist Church on Aldergate had an organ by Nicholson and Lord of Walsall (1903) that was Grade II* listed in its own right due to its quality. There were many fine monuments, memorials and features, some of which had been moved there from the Bolebridge Street Methodist Church and the Wesleyan Temple in Victoria Road when they closed.
With its spacious rooms, the church had welcomed many community groups for hold meetings and activities over 136 years. The Tamworth and District Civic Society (TDCS) was memorably re-launched there in 2015.
John Wesley (1703-1791), the founding Methodist, first visited Tamworth in 1743. Following disturbances in the Black Country, Wesley rode over to Tamworth to take legal advice from a Counsellor Littleton who lived there. However, the first visit of Methodist preachers to Tamworth was not recorded until 1771.
The early Methodists in Tamworth first met in the home of Samuel and Ann Watton and later in a room in Bolebridge Street. In 1787, John Wesley met the first Sir Robert Peel, who gave the Methodists a site for a permanchapel in Bolebridge Street. He told them: ‘My lads, do not build your chapel too large. People would like to go to a little chapel well filled better than a large one half full.’
The new chapel was opened on 15 July 1794. But it was clearly not built ‘too large,’ for by 1815 it was proving to be too small. In 1816, a new and larger chapel that could seat a congregation of 300 was built at a cost of £1,000.
But just as the first Wesleyan chapel in Bolebridge Street had proved too small, the second one also became inadequate, and in the 1870s it was decided to build a new one.
In 1877, Thomas Argyle, a Methodist solicitor, donated a plot of land for a new chapel on the corner of Victoria Road and Back Lane, now Mill Lane. The foundation stones for what would become the Wesleyan Temple were laid on 21 May 1877 and ‘topping out’ ceremony was held on 28 November 1877. The Wesleyan Temple, which opened on 9 April 1878, had an inspiring façade and could seat 650 people.
The Sunday School continued to use Bolebridge Street Chapel until new schoolrooms were built in 1898. The old chapel was sold to Woodcocks’ Printers, who used it for many years. Later, in the 1960s, the congregation at Victoria Road was joined by families from the Bolebridge Street Mission when it closed.
However, serious defects were detected at Victoria Road Methodist Church, as it became known, and the costs of remedying them were beyond the resources of the church. In early 1972, a decision was taken to close the church on Victoria Road and to amalgamate with the Methodist Church in Aldergate. The magnificent Victorian edifice of the church was preserved and at first accommodated squash courts. The inside was stripped out in 1974 and it has since been converted into residential apartments, although the façade remains part of the architectural legacy of Tamworth’s church history.
Today, there are also Methodist Churches at Glascote and Hopwas, and the ecumenical church at Saint Martin’s-in the-Delph at Stonydelph is shared between the Church of England and Methodists.
