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The Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Chapel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

David M. Robinson
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Extract

In this modest contribution to a very welcome festschrift for John Newman, I should like to draw attention to a small building in the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, a place better known for its celebrated ‘martyrs’ story than for anything of great architectural interest. Quite understandably, there is no mention of the structure in the current edition of the Dorset Pevsner, whereas in the Royal Commission’s work on the county it is incorrectly cited as a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century barn. Yet in terms of its ‘significance’, one could scarcely point to a building more resonant of the struggles of the common man at an especially formative stage in British history. Proof positive has recently been uncovered to show that this was in fact a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, purposely built in 1818, in which several of the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ not only worshipped but also served as accredited preachers. Methodism was at the heart of these mens’ religious and social beliefs, with their simple vernacular chapel the focus of daily life. On these grounds alone it is a building worthy of our utmost respect and fuller appreciation (Fig. 1).

Type
Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 275 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

Abbreviations

BL

British Library

DCRO

Dorset County Record Office (Dorchester)

TUC

The Trades Union Congress (General Council)

1 The paper is based on research undertaken on behalf of Nicholas Molyneux (English Heritage South West Region). A full account is filed at Savile Row: Robinson, David M., A Report on the Former Methodist Chapel at Tolpuddle, Dorset, Historical Analysis & Research Team Reports and Papers, 4 (1999)Google Scholar.

2 Newman, John and Pevsner, Nicholas, The Buildings of England: Dorset (Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 426–27Google Scholar; RCHM(E), Inventory . . . Dorset, 5 vols (London, 1952-75), 111, pt 2, p. 290 Google Scholar.

3 Surprisingly, it does not feature in Stell, Christopher, An Inventory of Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in South-West England (London, 1991)Google Scholar. It has been listed as grade II* since 1989, though without proof of its attribution: DoE, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: District of West Dorset (London, 1987)Google Scholar, amended (London, 1989).

4 The men were George Loveless (d. 1874), James Loveless (d. 1873), James Brine (d. 1902), Thomas Standfield (d. 1864), John Standfield (d. 1898), and James Hammett (d. 1891). For the arrest and the conviction, see Marlow, Joyce, The Tolpuddle Martyrs (London, 1971), pp. 13–94 Google Scholar; TUC, The Book of the Martyrs of Tolpuddle, 1834-1934 (London, 1934)Google Scholar, reprinted (London, 1999), pp. 1–30, 103-28.

5 For the correspondence between James Frampton (d. 1855) of Moreton in Dorset, and William Lamb (d. 1848), second Viscount Melbourne; see BL, Add. MS 41567L, with transcripts in TUC, Book, pp. 171-85. See also, Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 51–83.

6 For trial reports, see The Times, 20 March 1834, pp. 3f-4b; Dorset County Chronicle, 20 March 1834; also Loveless, George, The Victims of Whiggery: a Statement of the Persecutions Experienced by the Dorchester Labourers (London, 1837)Google Scholar; and Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 70-94.

7 Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 119-266; TUC, Book, pp. 31–101. Hammett was buried in St John’s churchyard, his grave marked in 1934 by an Eric Gill headstone.

8 Loveless, Victims, p. 10; with further context in Loveless, George, Church Shown Up, in a Letter to the Rev. Henry Walter (London, 1838)Google Scholar.

9 Morning Chronicle, 2 April 1834.

10 See Wearmouth, Robert F., Methodism and the Working-Class Movements of England 1800–1850 (London, 1937)Google Scholar; and more recently, Hempton, David, Methodism and Politics in British Society 1750-1850 (London, 1984)Google Scholar; also Davies, Rupert, George, A. Raymond and Rupp, Gordon, A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, 3 vols (London, 1965-83)Google Scholar.

11 Stell, Chapels, pp. 103-34.

12 Dated 21 March 1834: BL, Add. MS 41567L, fol. 161; TUC, Book, p. 181; Wearmouth, Working-Class, pp. 266-67.

13 Brine and Hammett were members of the Church of England, with no convincing evidence they ever embraced Methodism: Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 17-20, 225-32, 244, 246.

14 DCRO, NM.2: S19/M1 1/4.

15 Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 14-18; Wearmouth, Working-Class, pp. 254-70. ‘Methodism’, Wearmouth argued (p. 269), ‘cannot escape some share of the responsibility for the conduct that brought these men to prison and transportation’.

16 Marlow, Martyrs, p. 63; BL, Add. MS 41567L, fol. 141.

17 BL, Add. MS 41567L, fol. 161.

18 Loveless, Victims, p. 10.

19 Salisbury Journal, 19 October 1818, reporting the opening on 13 October.

20 The mob was very likely organized, with such disturbances not uncommon: Wearmouth, Working-Class, p. 263.

21 DCRO, T/Tol.

22 The collection is DCRO, NM.2, and includes an 1898 copy of the original 1818 title deed: S19/TS 3/2.

23 These were discussed in a letter of 7 July 1944 (DCRO, NM.2: S19/TS 3/2). The writer felt they were ‘really only of historical interest . . . [as] the deeds of the chapel attended by the Tolpuddle Martyrs’. He proposed they be deposited at Manchester, though in fact they were returned to Dorset. In 1999, Mr K. J. Salt tracked these down in the circuit safe, their significance perhaps not fully realized since 1945. They have now been deposited with the other material at DCRO, NM.2.

24 PRO, HO 129/275 (Dorchester); which suggests that the chapel had fallen out of use by this date.

25 DCRO, NM.2: S19/TS 3/1.

26 DCRO, NM.2: S19/TS 2/1. There is no evidence to suggest the transfer of practical or liturgical fittings from the old to the new building.

27 DCRO, NM.2: S19/TS 2/1.

28 DCRO, NM.2: S19/MI 1/4; Marlow, Martyrs, pp. 267-69.

29 DCRO, NM.2: S19/MI 1/3.

30 The brick-and-cob cottage is a grade I building on the basis of its historical associations: DoE, List, p. 100.

31 Dolbey, George W., The Architectural Expression of Methodism: The First Hundred Years (London, 1964), p. 96 Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., pp. 169-70.

33 Stell, Chapels, pp. 104-06.

34 Ibid., pp. 30-31, 104-05; Dolbey, Architectural Expression, pp. 96-97.

35 English Heritage, Buildings at Risk: South West (London, 1998), p. 22 Google ScholarPubMed (where the 1860s chapel is illustrated); 2nd edn (London, 1999), p. 30.

36 See the bundle of documents at DCRO, NM.2: S19/TS 5/1.