Sneinton has recently gained a Civic Society Mark of the Month, awarded for the conversion into flats of the former Albion Chapel in Sneinton Road. The design is by Allan Joyce Architects for the Framework Housing Association and Mark Harrison's account of the work involved appeared in the Newsletter before this. The building's change of use seems an opportune moment for a brief outline of its origins and earlier days, and for some reflection on its importance as a local landmark.
We go back to 1842, when a Sunday School was begun at Sneinton by members of Castle Gate Congregational Church; an existing property in Upper Eldon Street, off the north side of Sneinton Road, was acquired for this purpose. At this time Sneinton was home to more than 7,000 people, occupying about 1,600 houses. Until the Congregationalists arrived, this population had been served by only two places of worship; the parish church of St Stephen and a Methodist chapel in Byron Street.
The mission work carried on at Eldon Street proved sufficiently fruitful for an extra storey to be added to the building. More, however, was clearly required, and local Congregationalists eventually got together to discuss the desirability of erecting a new chapel in Sneinton. The first meeting to consider such a step was held in the Fletcher Gate warehouse of the great hosiery concern of I. & R. Morley. In the chair was Arthur Morley, head of the Nottingham end of that firm, and the last member of the Morley family to live at Sneinton Manor House. His sudden and early death in 1860 would be the occasion for a funeral in Sneinton churchyard, witnessed by an assembly estimated by the Nottingham newspapers to have numbered at least four thousand.
The committee formed to advance the building project were initially engaged in assessing the merits of the possible sites in the neighbourhood. Their choice fell upon a plot of available land just to the south of Sneinton Road, and late in September 1855 a handbill was issued advising local people, and friends from further afield, of the forthcoming laying of the chapel's foundation stone. This was to take place at 3pm on Monday, 8 October, the exact hour at which services were timed to begin to mark the bicentenary celebrations of Castle Gate Church.
The notice explained that ‘The Committee have been led to take the
necessary steps for erecting this place of worship, simply by a desire to
extend the gospel, and thus to further the spiritual interests of a large
and growing population.’ It was hoped that starting work on this new
chapel to coincide with the Castle Gate bicentenary might be ‘regarded
by such of the friends at Castle Gate as assist in the effort, as a memorial
of the favours so long conferred upon themselves.’ The handbill informed
its readers that: ‘It is proper to add that the Chapel is intended
to be entirely independent of any other; sustained by its own resources,
and under its own management.’
The local press lavished plenty of space on the stone-laying ceremony, the
Nottingham Review incorporating its account into an appraisal of two hundred
years of the Castle Gate meeting. The paper commented on the attendance
of ‘a very large concourse, including many of the most respectable
inhabitants of the town, and of the immediate vicinity.’
The new chapel was to be of red brick, with stone embellishments, by the architect Thomas Oliver junior of Sunderland. Although he must have been virtually unknown in Nottingham, Oliver was responsible for one of the model designs selected by the English Congregational Chapel Building Society. This had, according to the Review been ‘adapted by the architect to the site at Sneinton.’ Both the Nottingham Journal and Nottingham Review reported that the contract for the building works amounted to some £2,4000, the Journal furnishing the added information that the land had cost about £500, and that architect’s fees and other outgoings would probably bring the outlay to something approaching £3,300. Of this amount, said the Review one thousand pounds had already been donated - there was no mention of the identity of the donor or donors - while a further £400 would be forthcoming from the Chapel Building Society. Although various sources quoted different sums, it appears likely that the total cost eventually amounted to just over £5,000.
The proceedings on this October afternoon were protracted, so all present must have been grateful for fine weather. At least three Nottingham notables addressed the assembly. Following the singing of a hymn, the reading of two psalms, and the saying of a prayer, Alderman Thomas Herbert held the stage. The alderman’s house in the Ropewalk featured, unseen by most of his contemporaries, one of Nottingham’s greatest oddities. This was the ninety-foot tunnel constructed under the road, leading down to his garden. In his Rambles round Nottingham, published the following year, W.W. Fyfe described the sandstone carvings in the tunnel; Egyptian pillars, a druid playing the harp, and an animated sculptured group of Daniel in the lions’ den. Herbert observed that it was pleasant to be present on this occasion: ‘To assist in having another church erected for the benefit of the immortal soul of man. ‘
He was followed by William Booker of High Pavement, the prolific local architect who had the task of superintending the carrying out of Mr Oliver’s plans. Booker told his hearers of documents sealed in a bottle, which would be set beneath the foundation stone. These included the names of the committee of management, and of the architect and builder. Added to these was a report of the Nottingham County Association of Independent Churches, papers relevant to the Castle Gate bicentenary, and a statement telling how the Albion Chapel had come into being.
The bottle having been put in place, Alderman Herbert hoped that its contents would not come to light for a very long time, and then, ‘with the customary formalities,’ laid the foundation stone.
Next to speak was the Rev. Samuel McAll, minister of Castle Gate Church from 1843 to 1860. He pointed out that the population of Sneinton had now grown to about 10,000, which was almost as great as that of Nottingham itself a century earlier. In a phrase, which, had he lived in more recent times, he might well have reworded, Mr McAlI avowed that the erection of this place of worship in the heart of the built-up area of Sneinton ‘must be a great public convenience.’ He also looked forward to a more general observance of the Sabbath there, and saw the chapel as an further moralizing influence upon the community.
Construction went ahead smartly, Booker evidently working well with the builder, William Smith of Woolpack Lane. (Smith, like Arthur Morley, is buried in Sneinton churchyard, where a stone in his memory still stands on the south side of the church.) The Nottingham press described Booker as ‘our talented townsman,’ while Smith's endeavours were held by the Review to have done him credit, he having carried out his work ‘to the satisfaction of all parties.’
The Nottingham Journal approved of the ‘eligible and commanding’ site selected for the new chapel, while the Review was ‘struck by the neatness and consistency of the exterior, which is seen to great advantage, being literally ‘founded on a rock.’’ The latter paper judged the Albion to be ‘somewhat above the ordinary run of chapels as now erected,’ and praised the Congregationalists of Nottingham for putting up such a building. The main (north) frontage towards Sneinton Road was deemed especially striking, the press commenting on its Ionic pilasters, and on the way the round headed window over the door formed a big arch in the cornice of the pediment above it.
The Review had noted that, while the roof would appear to be a single unit from the outside, it was in internal construction of three parts, ‘thus securing a more regular weight and lateral thrust.’ The interior of the Albion Chapel was indeed of three compartments, with a coved ceiling in the centre, and divided into six bays by cast iron columns running all the way up to the ceiling, rather than terminating at the gallery. The gallery was ‘good and spacious,’ accommodating a seraphim (a version of the harmonium,) but the Review rather severely considered that the beauty of the ceiling was not enhanced by the paterae (moulded rosettes,) which were ‘stuck upon it like buttons on a coat.’
The same paper conceded that the chapel’s twenty-three windows afforded ample light, but held varying opinions about the building’s furnishings. It unreservedly approved of the seats, made of deal and stained to resemble oak. They were, suggested the reporter, ‘not of that knee-cramping quality so generally found in chapels of the present day.’ The pulpit and communion table, however, came in for sterner assessment, failing to agree ‘with the other parts of the edifice, being too heavy and stuck over with unmeaning ornament.’ (We should, perhaps, be impressed to find such severe aesthetic judgments put forward in Nottingham’s early-to-mid-Victorian media.)
It would be Interesting to know who wrote the Nottingham Review piece, which underlined what an interesting newspaper this was. Echoing the paper’s Radical philosophy, its writer showed a keen awareness of architecture and design, and his closing comments were concise and relevant. The report considered that the Albion Chapel was ‘a decided improvement on the ‘old style,’’ but asserted that architecture must keep pace with ‘the more cultivated and enlightened’ minds of the population, and that buildings which had satisfied the people of the eighteenth century would no longer be acceptable to their descendants in the 1850s. The Review was pleased to find ‘architects and architecture on the move,’ while yearning for ‘a great and vigorous soul thrown into architecture again.’
Stephen Best
December 2004
(To be concluded)
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