Researching the history of chapels
Chapels are places of Christian worship without parochial status. So chapels did not benefit from the system of tithes which supported parish churches for centuries. A chapel could be built and supported by private donors, by a guild, by a charitable, educational or religious body, or by a nonconformist congregation.
Private chapels
In the Middle Ages chapels could be created in houses, castles and
gatehouses, in royal and bishop's palaces and the lodgings of abbots.
These were private places of devotion for powerful men and their households,
served by chaplains.
Many a chapel built by a Saxon manorial lord beside his house evolved into to a parish church. With a church on the doorstep, a domestic chapel might be considered unnecessary, so we should not expect to find a chapel in every manor house. However the Reformation pressed hard on the consciences of Catholics, leading some Catholic families to create domestic chapels in later centuries, rather than worship in the Anglican parish church. Private chapels continued to be built in or beside new country houses well into the 19th century.
Medieval hospitals almost invariably had a chapel for their residents and staff and some later hospitals continued the tradition. For sources see charity buildings. Similarly many schools and colleges and some monastic granges were given their own chapels.
- Dispensations for private chapels, oratories or portable altars may be found from 1279 in the published calendars of patent rolls, continuing into the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII up to the Reformation, and sometimes in bishops' registers or the Calendar of Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Wills may refer to the family chapel.
- Mortmain licences to alienate (grant) lands to found chantries can be found in calendars of patent rolls, close rolls and Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.
- Family archives may contain building accounts and plans for post-medieval chapels.
- Royal chapels are covered by Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works.
- Volumes of the Catholic Record Society (listed in Mullins) include registers of various Catholic domestic and other chapels, many functioning before the Act of Toleration.
Chapels within churches and cathedrals
Many medieval chapels were built within churches. Structurally a chapel could simply be an altar placed in a side aisle or transept, but such chapels could be given greater privacy with decorative stone or wooden screens. Alternatively chapels could be added to the main structure. A common pattern within cathedrals was to group chapels in a semicircle around the east end accessible via an ambulatory. Lady chapels (devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary) tended to be the most magnificent.
Medieval chapels were often built as chantries, where a priest would sing masses for the souls of the founder and any others chosen by the founder. Chantries could have a single founder, but the less well-off could join a religious or trade guild, which arranged funerals and perpetual prayers for its members. Guilds might adorn and maintain a particular chapel: see the surveys of guilds in 1388 and of chantries at the Reformation. Medieval wills might found a chantry or make a gift to a specific chapel. Bishops' registers may record grants of indulgences for the adornment or repair of specific chapels.
Although many chapels were lost at the Reformation, when chantries were dissolved by the Chantries Act of 1547, some new chapels have been dedicated within churches and cathedrals in modern times, in some cases as memorials to war dead.
- Cook, G.H., Mediaeval Chantries and Chantry Chapels (rev. edn. 1963).
- Kreider, A., English Chantries: The road to dissolution (1979).
- See also the sources for churches or cathedrals, particularly accounts.
Bridge Chapels
Nonconformist Protestant chapels
Christianity has had its dissenters from its earliest days. For most of its history, the established Church in the British Isles has condemned those deviating from its tenets as heretics, and punished them with varying degrees of severity. The establishment of the Church of England and Church of Ireland at the Reformation simply changed the head of the Church from the Pope to the English monarch, rather than opening up a new era of tolerance. The Church of Scotland made a more radical break from the past, instituting Presbyterianism. Yet Quakers were still repressed in Scotland until 1689.
The word Nonconformist was originally used for anyone who refused to conform to the Act of Uniformity, which came into force on 24 August 1662, and required all English and Welsh clergy to consent to the entire contents of the Book of Common Prayer. The term was later applied to a wide variety of sects with one thing in common - their difference from the established Church. Fear that James II would re-establish Catholicism led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James was deposed in favour of the Protestant William of Orange. One outcome was The Act of Toleration passed in 1689, which permitted freedom of worship to Protestant dissenters from the Church of England (though it excluded Roman Catholics.) This Act required the registration of dissenters' meeting houses with quarter sessions (see the appropriate county record office), the bishops or archdeacons (see diocesan records.)
Before this landmark in legislation, Dissenters had mainly been meeting quietly in each other's houses or in rented rooms. Few chapels or meeting houses had been purpose-built. The Quaker Meeting House at Brigflatts, Cumbria, built in 1675, was among the earliest. Freedom of worship encouraged the building of Nonconformist chapels where congregations were large enough, or prosperous enough, to afford it. Early chapels tended to be plain, rectangular structures, and the humbler chapels continued in that style into the 19th century. Wealthier congregations favoured two-storey chapels with a Classical façade and internal gallery on the upper storey. In Victorian times some chose build chapels in the Gothic Revival style, virtually indistinguishable from the new Anglican and Roman Catholic churches of the period. At the other end of the scale were the chapels built cheaply from corrugated iron, often from prefabricated kits, and known as tin tabernacles. Nonconformity dominated in Victorian Wales, leaving a considerable heritage of chapels and associated buildings, many now redundant.
Studies and gazetteers
- Jones, A., Welsh Chapels, 2nd edn (1996).
- My Primitive Methodist Ancestors aims to build up an A-Z of pictures of Primitive Methodist chapels, past and present. It is supported by The Methodist Church and Englesea Brook Museum and maintained by volunteers.
- Smith, I., Tin Tabernacles: Corrugated iron mission halls, churches and chapels of Britain (2004).
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in Central England, RCHME (1986). Covers the historic counties of Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in Eastern England, English Heritage (2001). Covers the historic counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, Essex, Greater London, Hertfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough, Kent, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex.
- Stell, C.,Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in the North of England, RCHME (1994).
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in South-West England, RCHME (1991). Covers the historic counties of Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Isles of Scilly, Isle of Wight, Somerset and Wiltshire.
- Wakeling, C., Nonconformist Places of Worship (Historic England 2016).
Organisations
- Capel: The Chapels Heritage Society encourages the study and preservation of the Nonconformist heritage of Wales. Has a large online bibliography.
- The Chapels Society takes an interest in the architecture and history of Nonconformist places of worship in the UK. It publishes a newsletter.
- The Historic Chapels Trust supports redundant chapels, mainly Nonconformist. Its website gives photographs and history of a selection.
Published primary sources
- The Congregational Year Book for 1855 lists all Independent churches in the religious census of 1851.
- County and city directories from the 19th century give information on nonconformist chapels.
- Denominational handbooks, directories and year books e.g. the annual Baptist Handbook (1861- ).
- Evans, G.E., Vestiges of Protestant Dissent (1897) gives dates of foundation of all Unitarian, Liberal Christian and Presbyterian Churches.
- Myles, W., Chronological History of the People called Methodists (4th edn 1813) lists chapels with dates of erection.
Specialist archives
- Dr Williams's Library, 14 Gordon Square, London. Library of English Protestant Nonconformity. Holds a list of Dissenting congregations in England and Wales, 1715-1729, compiled by John Evans (for which there is a published index), and similar lists compiled in the 1770s by Josiah Thompson.
- The Methodist Archives and Research Collection at Manchester University Library.
- The Library of the Society of Friends, Friends House, Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ. Particularly useful among the Friends' archives are the monthly meeting minutes from late 1660s onwards, which provide information on meeting houses.
- Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) holds a chapels database listing all the nonconformist chapels and churches in Wales and a large archive of photographs, descriptions and surveys of chapels.
And see Nonconformists.