Little Chapel

A chapel with meeting room underneath, originally built as a coach house and stables in 1836 and converted to a chapel in 1925 by Sidney Barnsley, with interior fittings by Peter Waals and Norman Bucknall. Extended in 1936 by Peter Waals, with stained glass by Henry Payne, Edward Payne and Whitefriars.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed from squared and coursed limestone with limestone ashlar dressings, under Cotswold stone slate roofs. The interior has light oak panelling and fittings.

Plan

The plan is straightforward, comprising a rectangular chapel with a slightly narrower oriel at the sanctuary end, linked by a short corridor to the roughly square vestibule at the east end.

Exterior

The building stands single storey at street level, with another floor below set into the bank on which the chapel sits. All elements have hipped roofs. The main chapel range presents four bays to the street: three former carriage openings, two now converted to segmental-arched, three-light oak windows with diamond-pattern glazing, and the third to a similar entrance doorway. The westernmost bay is set back slightly with a lower roofline and has a single round-arched window to the street frontage.

A vestibule is reached via a short corridor to the east, set back from the street. The vestibule has its own street entrance matching that to the main chapel range. Both doorways have oak plank doors with mouldings, elaborate cast-iron strap-hinges and nail studding.

The west end has a single central window of one round-arched light, with the lower floor set back below, housing a 20th-century entrance door flanked by timber casement windows. The rear elevation has matching segmental-arched windows to the first floor with segmental-arched sashes, and a segmental-headed doorway below lighting the meeting hall.

Interior

The interior features good-quality, lightly-tooled ashlar walling above high oak panelled wainscot. All other furnishings, in Cotswold Arts and Crafts style, are in matching light oak. Pews, pulpit, communion table, panelling and bespoke altar by Peter Waals remain in situ, together with cast iron fittings, lamps and door handles.

The body of the chapel is separated from the later sanctuary by a broad limestone ashlar arch, marking where the building narrows towards the west end. The sanctuary has high moulded panelling inscribed "YE SHALL FIND THE BABE / LYING IN A MANGER" to either side of the altar. Three stained-glass windows around the sanctuary depict The Light of the World (by Edward Payne, 1947), The Nativity (Henry Payne, 1936) and The Good Shepherd (Whitefriars, after 1942).

The open roof structure consists of king-post trusses with single purlins, the ceiling between them plastered and limewashed. The iron fittings throughout are by Norman Bucknall in a matching Arts and Crafts idiom.

The vestibule has oak panelling and iron fittings which match those in the chapel, also by Waals and Bucknall respectively, and a coloured glass window with the insignia of the Tri-Sigma Guild, the junior congregation for which the chapel was created. The lower ground floor has a single large meeting space with lavatories at the west end.

History

On Sunday 1 July 1739, George Whitefield (1714-1770), contemporary and colleague of John Wesley at Oxford and great Calvinist Methodist leader, preached in the open air at Whitefield's Tump on Minchinhampton Common. A young man in the crowd, Thomas Adams, was so moved by Whitefield's sermon that he gave land at nearby Rodborough to build the Tabernacle as an independent, non-conformist place of worship in 1749, following Whitefield's teaching. The original building was completed in 1750. In 1836, with a large and flourishing congregation, the Tabernacle was extended to the north, necessitating demolition of its existing coach house. A new carriage house with stable below was consequently built across the lane in the same year.

During the incumbency of the Reverend Charles Ernest Watson (1869-1942), the number of young members of the congregation had increased significantly. There was a successful Sunday School, together with a Scout troop formed in 1909 meeting in the former stable below the coach house, and later a Guide company. Reverend Watson met weekly with young people over the age for Sunday School but too young to be fully received into the main congregation, and formed for them their own group, the Tri-Sigma Guild. He envisioned converting the coach house to a worship space for the group as well as for church meetings.

His idea was taken up by local businessman Reginald Tyrell, who offered a sum between £500 and £700 for conversion of the building into a chapel. The conversion was designed in 1925 by Sidney Barnsley, the architect and designer who was one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts group based at nearby Sapperton. The work included joinery by Peter Waals and ironwork by Norman Bucknall, who were working as part of the same workshops.

In 1936, following the death of his wife Emma, Mr Tyrell gave further funds for extension of the chapel to incorporate a projecting bay (known by the congregation as the oriel) at the west end and a new vestibule to the east. Due to the presence on site of two beech trees which were the last vestiges of the ancient Rodborough Wood, the oriel was made slightly narrower than the body of the chapel, and the vestibule was detached from the rest of the building, linked by a short corridor which ran behind one of the trees.

The work was undertaken under the aegis of Peter Waals, who created all the joinery elements in the new extensions, with further work by Bucknall. The new oriel housed the sanctuary with three windows to which stained glass was gradually added: the first in 1936, by Henry Payne, who formed part of the same Arts and Crafts group, depicts the Nativity. In 1947, his son Edward added a window after William Holman Hunt's famous painting, The Light of the World. The third window, a depiction of Jesus as The Good Shepherd by the Whitefriars company in London, was placed in memory of Reverend C E Watson and installed after his death in 1942.

The Little Chapel continues to serve as a subsidiary place of worship for the congregation of the Rodborough Tabernacle. It has group value with the adjacent Rodborough Tabernacle and the attached Manse, as well as Tabernacle Cottage, with all of which it has a functional as well as a visual relationship.