A mystery in Church Stretton and the most picturesque tin tabernacle of them all in Little Stretton

This is the last of these brief posts on where I have been that day, as I'm going home to Leicestershire tomorrow. They will remind me of what I got up to on holiday and of some possible longer posts about the places I've been to that I may write later in the year.

Today it was the town of Church Stretton and the village of Little Stretton. I saw several emergency vehicles in Church Stretton and a helicopter landed in the centre, all of which made me fear that someone had met with an accident on the Long Mynd, a hill that towers over the town. But I can't find any news reports about what was going on.

And in Little Stretton I once again admired All Saints' Church. This began life in 1903 as a tin tabernacle – one of those flat-pack, corrugated-iron churches that were produced in their hundreds for new industrial settlements or the further reaches of the Empire.

It's a surprise to find one in an ancient Shropshire village, but All Saints' was soon zhuzhed up with a mock Tudor exterior and thatched roof to make it look at home. And it does to this day.

Later. The incident at Church Stretton, whatever it was, didn't make the media, but somebody was flown to the Royal Stoke University Hospital in the helicopter.

Hallaton Museum is housed in a tin tabernacle

I went to Hallaton today and found a tin tabernacle. It houses Hallaton Museum, which will be open in the afternoon at weekends and bank holidays from 21 April to 6 October.

This tin tabernacle was purchased in 1894 by the new rector of Hallaton, Canon Chetwynd-Stapylton, to serve the village for recreation and as a reading-room.

An unidentified local history book tells us:

His generous gesture failed to secure him a seat on Hallaton Parish Council and he subsequently recorded his disappointment in the Parish Magazine:

"I thought that I have established a fair claim to be accounted a good citizen of Hallaton. I have stood entirely alone in the erection of a Parish Room, at considerable cost, in furnishing, heating and lighting it and supplying it with newspapers, etc. as a reading room for two winters…"

Never mind, Canon Chetwynd-Stapylton, you had a great name.

For Michaelmas: St Michael and All Angels, Kettering

Today is Michaelmas - the Feast of St Michael and All the Angels. To mark it, here is my favourite tin tabernacle.

As I noted when I visited St Michael and All Angels, Kettering, Pevsner says it dates from 1907 and "has distinct charm". I also said that its garden gives it more appeal than many conventional urban churches of the period.

Church hall for sale in Market Harborough

The church hall at St Hugh's in Granville Street, Market Harborough, is on the market for £215,000 and "suitable for a variety of commercial, community and residential uses".

Its sale must be connected with plans to adapt the church itself for more community use.

I took these photos of it this lunchtime. St Hugh's began as one of those flatpack 'tin tabernacle', which means that the hall used to be more substantial than the church.

You can read about how practical these corrugated iron churches were for worship in another Liberal England post about St Hugh's.

The tin tabernacle served here until the main church opened in 1940. The space it occupied is still vacant, and I was chatting to someone who remembered having judo lessons inside it in 1970. It would be interesting to know when it was taken away.

I'd like to see a coffee shop here, for purely selfish reasons, but it may be a bit far from the town centre for that.

Mind you, the property market in Granville Street can be unpredictable, for it was the site of Market Harborough's Great Bungalow Mystery.

You may recall that the council paid £920,000 with an estimated value of £303,000. Conservative-run Harborough District Council commissioned a report into the affair and then refused to publish it.

The council even made it into Private Eye last summer because of it.

Cambridge Hall, Kilburn: A cathedral among tin tabernacles

From the London Historic Buildings Trust website:

The Tin Tabernacle (Cambridge Hall) is a Grade II listed building within the South Kilburn Conservation Area and is currently on the Heritage at Risk Register.

It was built in 1863 as the St James’s Episcopalian church and though stylistically very different, it was constructed around the same time as its grand Italianate brick villa neighbours. The Hall is built of corrugated iron, which has been galvanised with tin to prevent rust, cladding a timber and iron frame. This type of prefabricated structure was developed in the 1820’s and by the latter half of the 19th century became a relatively common building type, particularly utilised by the non-conformist church movement.

It is understood that the Tin Tabernacle was in active church use until the late 19th century. In the early 20th century it was used for theatre shows and possibly as an early cinema and by the first World War it was known as the Lord Lloyd of Dolobran Memorial Hall. During the Second World War it was used as an Air Raid Precautions store, before being taken on by the Sea Cadets in 1949 and renamed the Training Ship Bicester. 

During the 1950’s the interior of the Hall was converted into a replica Ton-class Minesweeper vessel, utilising the north and south aisles to create a series of naval rooms; a galley (kitchen) chapel, rope room, museum and armoury, with a first-floor gallery above.  At the rear (east end of the ship), three further rooms were created; a Bosun’s, store a Ward Room and a parade ground exit, with additional first floor rooms. A Bofors anti-aircraft gun and Oerlikon light anti-aircraft cannon, were also installed.

The Sea Cadets continue to look after the Hall, though they are no longer able to hold their activities there. 

The former Church of Christ, Dashwood Road, Leicester

Now the Muslim Khatri Association Community Centre, this building is described by Leicester's 2016 Local Heritage Asset Register as:

A good example of an early-20th century former Church of Christ. Built circa 1924 to the designs of architects G. Lawton Brown and Percy C. Jones, the church makes good use of brindle mix brickwork and a prominent 3-storey corner tower that has a strong presence within the street scene. 

With its William Morris touches, it is more appealing than most churches of this period.

And there is more. The Register entry ends:

The church replaced a temporary corrugated iron church, erected in 1908.

So this is another candidate for the original home of the nearby tin tabernacle that now houses the city's women Freemasons.

Oh, and let's hear it for the number on the shop next door.

Another tin tabernacle in Leicester

It's always a good day when you find a new tin tabernacle. This one is near the Evington Road in Leicester.

There is no signage to say who uses it now, but whoever it is has spent money to make it secure from vandals and burglars.

But I have found a tantalising clue to its history in a Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society paper about St James the Greater, the large Romanesque church on the London Road, from 1986:

There is a strong tradition in the church which has been passed down from older members of the congregation, that the building which stands in Dore Road, the Millicent Morris Memorial Hall, was the temporary church rebuilt in Dore Road when the stone church was erected. 

The two photographs which survive of the temporary church, one inside and the other outside, show that there are significant differences in the plan of the two buildings and it seems unlikely that if the temporary church was moved it was not erected in exactly the same manner. 

It has not been possible to inspect the inside of the Dore Road building to see if there are any similarities and so for the moment no firm conclusions can be drawn about the fate of the temporary church and the possible link with the structure in Dore Road. 

There are other stories linking the Dore Road building with St Philip's, but the brief history of the church (Scott, 1984) states that the 'tin church' came from St Michael's, Belgrave. 

Research is being undertaken by the Order of Women Freemasons who use the Dore Road building, and they may eventually discover the origins of that building.

A bit of googling shows that the women masons still use the building, so I am may drop them a line to see if their research reached a firm conclusion.

Long Eaton's second tin tabernacle

I found St Mary's near Long Eaton station earlier this summer, but there is a second tin tabernacle nearer the town centre.

Derbyshire Places of Worship tells its story:

This is a classic "tin tabernacle" building, with a central porch, sides of four bays, each with a window, and painted pale blue. According to The Long Eaton and Sawley Archive the building started life as a Railway Mission, for which meetings were held in Midland Street. 

This cause became defunct, and the building and its furnishings were purchased by the United Gospel Mission, who had been meeting in the former Primitive Methodist Church in Chapel Street. They renovated the Mission Hall, and re-erected it further down the same street, where it was in use for 27 years.

It is still in use as commercial premises, though it has now been painted green.

Labour lose control of Telford & Wrekin after one of their councillors joins the Lib Dems

Good news from Shropshire:

Labour has lost overall control of Telford and Wrekin Council as a former mayor's defected to the Liberal Democrats. 

Kevin Guy, who represents Woodside, says, although he supports his local Labour group, he can no longer support the national party and Jeremy Corbyn. ... 

His decision leaves Labour with 27 councillors - they are still the largest party but with no overall control out of a total of 54 seats.

Kevin Guy explained his action on Twitter earlier today:

1,2: I have decided to join the Liberal Democrats because I believe Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour Party in the wrong direction & Labour’s fudge on a second referendum is not something I agree with.

— Cllr Kevin Guy (@CllrKevinGuy) August 31, 2018

2.2 The Labour run council in Telford & Wrekin have done a fantastic job in defending local people from the savage Tory cuts & I will continue to support that but I cannot stay in a party which, nationally, I so fundamentally disagree with on the main issue facing this generation

— Cllr Kevin Guy (@CllrKevinGuy) August 31, 2018

Six of the Best 811

"At many junctures in the book, the ability to think historically deserts its author. He describes men such as Hitler as 'short' when their height (5ft 8in in his case) exactly matched the average height of European men at the time; and he describes Churchill as a 'Victorian Whig', though the Whigs’ attitude to the state in legislation such as the 1834 Poor Law was entirely different to Churchill’s." In 2014 Richard J. Evans wrote an enjoyable scathing review of Boris Johnson's study of Winston Churchill.

Oz Katerji looks at the reaction to Israel's rescue of the White Helmets from Assad's Syria.

"Susan and Colin of the Weirdstone Trilogy walk the same paths that Garner walked with his father; around the Edge, up to Stormy Point and past the various wells that litter the path." Adam Scovell looks at the use of landscape in Alan Garner's fiction.

Being Donald Bradman's son was such a burden that for a while John Bradman changed his surname to Bradsen. Belinda Hawkins and Wendy Page meet the family of the greatest batsman cricket has seen.

Philip Wilkinson has found another tin tabernacle. It's at Halse near Brackley.

An Egyptian city built for Cecil B, DeMille is emerging from the Californian sand. Katya Cengel reports.

A tin tabernacle near Long Eaton station

I reached Long Eaton station without much money and had to find an ATM before I headed for Trent Lock.

There was a garage in the distance. Maybe it would have one? It did and, as a reward for my enterprise, there was a tin tabernacle across the road.

St Mary's, Sawley, made the BBC News Derbyshire pages in 2011 when it was announced that £100,000 was to be spent on it.

That report quoted the Revd Alicia Petty:

"It was the custom, at the beginning of the 20th Century, for churches to set up little tin hut buildings and they were sometimes used for youth clubs or Sunday school or even to establish a mission church, which is what ours was here for. 

"The idea was that they would be replaced eventually with brick buildings. 

"Somewhere along the line that plan fell to dust here."

St Michael and All Angels, Kettering

I did not make this discovery through urban wandering but by reading Pevsner. He says Kettering's St Michael and All Angels dates from 1907 and "has distinct charm".

He is right. In today's sunshine and with a garden planted around it, this corrugated-iron church - to be found not far from Harry Potter House - had more appeal than many conventional urban churches of the period.

The Picture Theatre, Oakham

Wandering the back streets of Oakham (as one does), I came across this corrugated-iron building. As the site is being sold for development, its days are numbered.

An old boy living across the road told me that it used to be a cinema, and he was right.

Cinema Treasures tells us:

The Picture Theatre operated from 1925. It was an extremely modest affair, with the cinema, constructed out of corrugated iron, referred to, no doubt with some affection, as the ‘Tin Tabernacle’. 

The 1931 Kinematograph Year Book lists the owner and manager as Captain Guy Dawson, The Old House, Oakham. At that time, it was open just three days a week, giving six performances in total. It was equipped first with an Edibel sound system in 1930, then by an Imperial sound system manufactured in Leicester. 

The Picture Theatre was purchased by Frederick B. Salt in 1934, but was closed in 1935 with George Arliss in “Alexander Hamilton”.

All Saints, Little Stretton - an Edwardian flat-pack church

Taken, I would estimate, in the first half of the 1990s, this photograph of mine shows the Edwardian wooden church at Little Stretton in Shropshire.

It appears to be a high class version of the corrugated iron mission churches that were sent around the Empire (and to darkest England) in kit form to be assembled.

Indeed its roof was originally made from corrugated iron, but the church was later thatched to give it its current picturesque appearance.

A tin tabernacle in Herne Bay

Wandering the back streets of Herne Bay, I failed to find one of Lord Bonkers' favourite causes: the Home for Distressed Canvassers.

On reflection, it is probably housed in one of the grand 19th-century houses facing the sea at the Eastern end of town on the way in from Reculver.

What I did find was this fine tin tabernacle, now home to the Army Cadets.

Six of the Best 343

"Josh Dixon was brave enough to confront conference as a Lib Dem, arguing that the party’s heart is still in the right place and Labour were just as bad on education. He received a thunderous applause and no heckling." On the Libertine, Rich Clare describes his experience as a delegate at the National Union of Students' conference.

On the day of her funeral, The View from the Hills offers a clear-eyed verdict on the economic and political legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

A briefing from 20's Plenty explains that school safety zones should not be a priority - children benefit far more from a community-wide 20mph speed limit.

Eye Magazine (no relation) looks at the way Private Eye is laid out. Like the jokes, this has hardly changed in 50 years.

"In recent times we have seen two more spinners return from England involvement, apparently unable to bowl as they had previously. David Wainwright, crowd favourite and hero of many a rearguard battle, seemed to have 'lost' his action at the start of the 2010 season. The previous September, he had saved us from relegation with a wonderful all-round performance at Hove; now he was out of the side and drifting towards Derbyshire." ESPN cricinfo blogger Dave Morton marks the start of the domestic cricket season by questioning the effects of our national coaches.

English Buildings discovers another of those corrugated-iron churches that so please this blog. This one is in Kilburn and a cathedral of the breed.

White Grit Methodist Chapel for sale

A couple of years ago I wrote about White Grit, a former lead mining settlement which is off the Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle road and just over the Welsh border:

There is a Methodist chapel in the village, and this was probably where most of the miners worshipped. So I suspect the Church presence here was in the nature of a mission - hence the economical iron church.

Time moves on.

The Tin Tabernacle was still holding services last time I was in White Grit (it is the same one you can glimpse at the start of the documentary about Ronnie Lane I blogged about recently), but the Methodist Chapel at White Grit has closed and is up for sale.

Halls of Bishop's Castle has the details of the property.

Newton Harcourt Village Hall

Nowadays there is a rather sad game you can play when visiting a village for the first time: guess where the post office used to be.

Newton Harcourt made it easy, having an Old Post Office in a Post Office Lane. Down that lane there was also a fine mid 19th century school perched above a railway cutting. In fact I have seen this building on my commute every day without realising what it was.

And Newton Harcourt Village Hall is one of those prefabricated corrugated-iron buildings I like so much. It has a brick extension at one end, but its essential nature is not in doubt.

If the chapel from Mowsley Hospital can be dismantled and then re-erected miles away, maybe this hall was first used as a church somewhere else?

Market Harborough had a tin tabernacle

This is St Hugh's in Northampton Road, Market Harborough, which was opened in 1940. The new parish was carved out of Little Bowden in 1920 to serve the housing that had appeared south of the River Welland since the late Victorian period. (The two parishes were reunited some years ago.)

On Saturday I bought a pamphlet about this church's history:

Following a meeting in November 1892 it was agreed to acquire the necessary land and build a Mission Room. The building was opened on 16th August 1893. The building is still in use as the Church Hall ...

The Mission Room rapidly proved too small and in 1895 a temporary church was built using corrugated iron and referred to either as the Iron Church or as the Tin Tabernacle.

Soon after the Iron Church was opened the parishoners started to think about a "permanent church". Their dreams were realised when the present building was consecrated on 10th February 1940.

So there was a Tin Tabernacle in Market Harborough for 45 years. The odd thing is that I have always knows that St Hugh's was the "Iron Church", but had wrongly assumed that was because iron was somehow used in the construction of the 1940 church. Instead it seems that the old nickname attached itself to the new building.

The pamphlet - "St Hugh's Church Market Harborough, 1940-1990" by C.G. Medley - is not enthusiastic about Tin Tabernacles, quoting a report about the one at St Hugh's from 1913:

"There are many reasons why we must make an effort to find the money required as soon as possible. Among them: the heat in summer and the cold in winter are both intensified in a building of iron. Again, we are very crowded together, it is a difficulty to kneel in comfort. Ventilation without draught is an impossibility, in one part of the building people are calling out for windows to be open and somewhere else they are suffering from draught. There is no spaciousness which is so necessary not only for health but also for dignity."

Six of the Best 149

You may not be surprised to learn from Virtually Naked that today's encounter between Nick Clegg and Gillian Duffy had Labour's fingerprints all over it.

Chris Davies MEP wants Liberal Democrats to be angry, be proud and campaign harder.

Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, has asked Sir Philip Mawer, the adviser on the ministerial code of conduct, to investigate George Osborne. Channel 4's Gary Gibbon has the story.

John Major's next book, according to the diary in yesterday's Evening Standard, will be a social history of the music hall: "The introduction to the book is apparently extraordinary, comprising the death scene of Major’s father, Tom Major-Ball, the music hall performer and circus artiste, who died in 1962 aged 83, having performed at every theatre in the British Isles. Every act in the country trooped through to perform at the bed of their dying fellow artiste. And young Major watched it all."

Could it be that Mr Gladsone is to thank for modern Britain's love of wine? An article on History Extra says: "James Nicholls of Bath Spa University, a specialist on the history of alcohol consumption, hails the 1860 Treaty of Commerce - in which import duties were reduced on all wine - as a turning point. William Gladstone, the treaty’s chief architect, spoke openly of what he hoped would be a change in British drinking habits - away from an obsession with beer - so that wine would no longer be a 'rich man’s luxury'."

I am not the only Liberal Democrat with an interest in tin tabernacles, as an old post about Kilburn by Ed Fordham proves.