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A History of Worship in Street
Talk by Revd David Parsons
Illustrations for this talk are here. By following instructions on the Shutterfly site you can see them either individually or as an automatic slide show.
How to get from a lonely saint camped by the marshy ground near the Brue to the present variety of Christian congregations in Street in less than an hour? This talk will have to be a series of word pictures strung like Christmas cards on a thin thread of history. You will recognise many of the earlier stories if you have read The Book of Street. You may well quarrel with some of what I say about recent events and people, and that is the nature of history and memory. People's memories are fallible - I'm horribly aware how my own memory is deteriorating - and people's viewpoints differ. But I'll do the best I can.
Pagan times
Let me start by painting a landscape from my imagination.
Between two hills, each wooded with a variety of scrubby trees, lies a marsh, with occasionally
a trackway of posts and cross-beams and brushwood
where men, women and children wearing thick woollen tunics and shawls or capes held in place
with fibulae, like brooches or decorated safety-pins, can pick their way with care.
Today a group comes from a small village of huts built in a lake on great piles, to visit a sacred place, a low island - dry land just rising above the marsh towards the western hill. They are not savages. They are part of a highly organised society with a king called Corio and his nobles, a warrior class, and many peasants and slaves,
a society that has contacts with the mighty Roman Empire across the sea, through traders and craftsmen travelling to and fro, bringing ideas and news, a society that mints coinage. Today they carry small offerings for the spirit of the place. We don't know anything about this spirit, but it may have been the goddess of the river, or some spirit revered at a ford - a ford, because the river was shallower than today, its water spread out thinly among the rushes and mosses of the swamp.
Like
Sulis of the swamps that are now Bath, like
Coventina of a spring by Hadrian's Wall, it is highly probable that our river had its own spirit. We have no image of this spirit, because our people of the Dobunni tribe made no images of their gods. It was only when the Romans came that British people learned to imagine their gods in human form. Our party may well throw their offerings into the river.
Rich offerings like an elaborate
shield found in the Thames at Battersea, and humbler ones like spears, have been found in water from this period. How do we know they were offerings, and not lost by accident? Because they are new, without any of the dents or scars of battle on them. But objects did get lost, too.
Someone in the shrine dropped
a small gold coin, a stater, with the name of their King on one side, and it stayed in the earth for about 2000 years until a grave-digger found it in 1905 and handed it over to a Joseph Clark. It was bought in 1913 by Taunton Museum, who have lost it. And so there is a real link between my flight of fancy and a real object, found, and lost again, in modern times.
There is another link, too. And that is the existence, as long as records go back, of a holy place by the Brue, there where the gold stater of Corio lay buried. The shadowy Kay who gave us the name Lantokay, now associated with Witherspoons in the High Street, may have been a Christian saint, or may even have been that water spirit that we imagined being worshipped by Dobunni from
the Glastonbury or Meare Lake Village in the first century before Christ; just as the Romans took over Celtic divinities and linked them with Roman gods and goddesses, as Celtic Sulis with Roman Minerva in Bath, Roman Mars with Celtic Toutatis in Gaul, so Christianity sometimes took over local deities and, lo and behold, they became Christian saints. Some people think that St Bridget, second patron saint of Ireland, was the very same as the Bridget of pagan Celtic theology.
St Gildas
However that may be, by the time St Gildas was ready to leave his lonely hermitage in the Bristol Channel in the early 6th century and to look for a place of solitude near the little Christian community that was beginning in Glastonbury, a sacred place was ready for him beside the Brue. What had happened during the Roman centuries between our Celtic worshippers and St Gildas we cannot know. The holy place went on being visited. Pottery such as Romans and romanised Britons used was broken and left about the site. There was local black burnished ware,
there was glossy red Samian Ware, imported from Gaul or Italy,
there was the local imitation of that Sunday best Samian, fine grey with brown slip, all the way from the New Forest, a kitchen mixing bowl from Oxford. Traders were clearly active, here as all over Britain. Taunton Museum has not lost those pieces, but the pieces that they have are all rather good - rims and feet of pots, rather than plain sherds that are hard to place; so it seems clear that the gravediggers salvaged only the interesting bits, and very many more pieces of broken Roman pottery must certainly lie yet among the bones of the rude forefathers of the village in Street churchyard. If there was a temple in Roman times - and the archaeologists did not go down far enough during the recent investigations inside the Parish Church to find anything Roman - if there was a temple, we should not imagine a
classical building like a miniature Parthenon. Possibly the only place in Roman Britain you could have found
a temple like that would have been in Colchester, and Boudicca's hordes
burned that to the ground, along with the crowd of frightened Romans who had sought shelter inside it.
No,
Romano-British temples tended to be small, usually square, with a small central room surrounded by a colonnade, probably of wooden pillars, and topped by a pitched roof.
So we might imagine Gildas rebuilding the ruins of such a temple as a chapel in honour of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, or more likely starting from scratch, living in a hut that he built with his own hands, served by his attendants - oh yes, even as he sought solitude he had attendants, and spending his time in prayer and fasting, in writing, and in receiving the people who travelled long distances to consult him. Caradoc of Llancarfan tells us more about Gildas' life on that island in the Bristol Channel than by the Brue: "Gildas," he wrote, "established an oratory in honour of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, and near it his bedroom. He did not, however, have his bed in this room, but placed under a high rock, where he used to lie awake until midnight praying upon the rock to Almighty God. Then he used to go to the church." Of his time in Street, Caradoc has this to say: "The most religious Gildas, gaining permission from the Abbot, clergy and people of Glastonia, desired once again to take up the life of a hermit by the river bank close to Glastonia. He was able to carry out his wish. He built there a church in honour of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, in which he fasted and prayed unceasingly, dressed in goatskin, giving a blameless example of good living and religion. Holy men from distant parts of Britain came to visit him, a man who deserved such visits. He gave them counsel, and as they returned home they would recall his encouragement and advice with exultation." Another writer gives Gildas' chapel the name "Chapel of Happy Retreat."
We do not know where Gildas was when he wrote the story of the Downfall of Britain, de Excidio Britanniae, a story of his own times that, interestingly, fails to mention the person who would have been the most important of all, had he existed - King Arthur. But it is not impossible that the book was written here. It is a melancholy work, but out of the saint's complaints I choose a little of the description of Britain, because the words help me to picture the land in his time: He rails against "those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary. Nor will I call out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour." If he was indeed, as I speculated, living by the ruins of a pagan shrine, near where people used to worship the spirit of the river, that fits very well.
Let us hear just a little more of Gildas - his death, as Caradoc tells it:
"In the end he fell ill. His illness grew worse, and he called the Abbot of Glastonia to him. He begged him, with much piety, that when he had ended his life's course his body should be taken to Glastonia Abbey, which he loved dearly. The Abbot gave his word. Gildas asked worthy men to carry out his wishes. While the Abbot grieved and wept copiously because of what he had heard, the most holy Gildas, very ill, died. Many people witnessed the fragrant angelic splendour around the body, the angels forming an escort for his soul. After a tearful commendation had been made, the frail body was carried by fellow monks to the abbey, and with great grief and due honour was buried in the middle of the pavement of St Mary's church. His soul went to its rest, and rests now. It will rest eternally in heavenly rest. Amen." So Gildas died here in Street.
The 'lan' by the Brue
This was around AD 510, perhaps a little later. Maybe in Gildas' time, maybe after his death, the sacred place - and in pre-Christian times it was the place itself that was sacred, whether or not there was a building there - the sacred place was marked out by a bank. This is now a wall, but you can still detect raised ground on the inside on the wall, and if you visit beautiful County Wicklow, in the little village of Kiltegan you will see the Church of Ireland churchyard surrounded by a bank just like the one that once surrounded Street churchyard. In Ireland, by the way, it is always the Church of Ireland churches that occupy the ancient holy places. The RC Church was not allowed to have any buildings until comparatively recently.
A hundred years or more go by, during which the little monastery in Glastonbury grows in prestige and wealth, so that by AD 680 Abbot Hemgisel persuades his Bishop, who lives far off in Winchester, a man called Heddi, to grant him the land called Lantocai, which is now called Legh, 3 hides (nearly 500 acres), or by another account 6 hides. This was the Street churchyard, probably the home of a small religious community, and the three (or six) hides had probably been given to the community by a British King. Now the community was going to be put under the Abbot of Glastonbury, and the kings Centwine and Baldred consented, and King Caedwalla confirmed the gift; he signed the document by making a cross, as illiterate people have done ever since. Kings had more important things to do than learn to read and write. Under Glastonbury it remained for more than 800 years.
There is a document, but scholars believe it is a later forgery, dated 725, in which Street is listed among the Seven Churches that belonged to Glastonbury alone, and were not under the Bishop of Bath and Wells. If the document is genuine, then we know that the church in Street existed in the 8th century; if it is a 12 century forgery, then at least we know that the Street church was there shortly after Domesday Book.
Medieval life
For the vast majority of the time, no doubt life went on peacefully, hard beyond our 21st century imagination, but good-humoured and perhaps sometime with true godliness.
Domesday Book lists seven villagers, ten smallholders and one slave. Evidently the religious community, if there in fact was one, had moved to the Abbey long before 1086. Perhaps the people of Street went to the Abbey for their Sunday worship and many Saints' Days,
which were their holidays as well as essential for marking the passage of time, telling them when to plough and sow, when to work for the Abbot as part of their rent, and so on.
Glastonbury had a Fair and was probably the place to go for entertainment and to meet people. Religion and entertainment, sacred and secular, went very closely together in pre-reformation times. Perhaps sometimes a priest from the Abbey would come out to the chapel of St Gildas to say Mass, or perhaps a priest lived in Street, as he certainly did in 1238.
About the year 1200 Street had a church and chapels - not, of course, free church chapels such as we enjoy now, but smaller places of worship belonging to the parish church. We know this, because Bishop Savaric, Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, gave the revenues of Street church and its chapels to Glastonbury Abbey. Eighteen years later the Pope himself took an interest in Street.
Pope Honorius confirmed the grant of revenues to the abbey, mentioning 'the Church of Street with chapel'.
In 1238 Michael of Amesbury, Abbot of Glastonbury, held a survey and found that along with Street's two millers and 4 'virgaters' (small landholders), Jordan de Legha, Roger son of Margaret and his brother William, and Martin of Mere, there was Walter the chaplain. The other people mentioned had to work on the Abbot's fields, as well as paying rent, but Walter the Chaplain was excused the work, and just paid 3s rent a year. If he was the parish priest, he would have enough to do already.
Now the question arises, if the revenues of the church and chapel or chapels went to Glastonbury, and Walter the Chaplain had to pay rent to the Abbey, what did Walter live on? Where did his money come from? We see part of the answer a few years later, in 1261, when an inquest was held to decide if John Channel, late Rector of Street, had the right to a 'pound'. What was that? It was the 13th century equivalent of clamping illegally parked cars, and charging to take off the clamp. The Rector must have had land, including an enclosure known as a pound. Any animals that went astray could be captured and 'impounded' in the pound, and then the Rector could impose a fine on the owner to restore the stray animals. A nice little earner for the Rector. Unfortunately for him, the Abbot claimed the right to keep the pound, not the Rector. The inquest panel supported the Abbot. The Rector, they said, should have taken the beasts to the abbot, who had the right to the fines.
By the way, we would not have known about John Channel the Rector if it hadn't been for this law-suit. The first Rector on our official list was not appointed until 1304, forty-three years later. Why was he called Rector and not Vicar? I don't know. In many parishes, the difference between a Rector and a Vicar is that a Rector (Latin for Ruler) was originally appointed to be in independent charge, while a Vicar (Latin for Substitute) was appointed to stand in for a neighbouring Abbot. That is why I have always been puzzled that Street has a Rector and not a Vicar. But Rector it is.
Incidentally, from 1325 the same man was Rector of both Street and Walton. Street was the more important place from the point of view of sacredness and church tradition, but Walton was the bigger and richer place, so the Rector used to live in Walton. That is why Walton has a medieval Old Rectory and Street does not.
John Lax and other Rectors
We get another clue about what the Rector of Street lived on, when we study a document photocopy that used to hang in the Parish Church. A dispute had apparently gone on for many years, involving at least two Abbots of Glastonbury and four different Rectors of Street, Masters Roger Wodehill, John Stone, John Lax and William Bockett. It was all about money.
Oh, by the way, John Lax. One of the four Rectors involved. In 1448 John Lax alias Chestre was appointed Rector of Walton and Street. He was a colourful character, but does not seem to have done much for Street and Walton. He fell out with one of his influential parishioners, as Dr Dunning told the story to an early meeting of this Society, and just before Easter 1450, when everyone in the parish had to visit the confession, Lax was worn out hearing confession after confession, and with great relief locked the church
and set off home, when this parishioner came up and set his dog on him. The only weapon Lax had was the hefty church key, and he was able to defend himself with that; otherwise he might have been killed.
Lax was a lawyer, and he wanted to leave parish duties and get on with his studies at university. Pope Nicholas V, no less, gave him leave to be absent from his parish to study. Like many students today, Lax got distracted by other matters and did not make progress with his studies. (29 Henry VI)
He claimed to be too busy because of work that King Henry VI, the extremely pious but politically ineffective young ruler, and 'certain other Lords of the Realm' required him to do for them. The Pope in 1453 granted him three more years away from his parish. It was a tense time in English history. Henry VI was going through a period of insanity, and his wife Margaret of Anjou had a son, Edward, on 13th October that year. War between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians was looming. What with bad relations in the parish and dodgy politics in the country, Lax left for Rome.
While still officially Rector of Street and Walton, he held the post of abbreviator of papal letters, and he obtained permission to hold two other benefices as well as Street. He collected yet more parishes while he travelled on the Pope's business, including the Rectory of Beccles in Suffolk, where I was once curate.
But in 1459 he fell out with a powerful Roman cleric, and in the legal disputes that followed it emerged that he had never been priested - indeed, he had never even been admitted into one of the lower orders of clergy. He lost most of his money and had to sell his house in Rome to pay his debts. Naturally he was thrown out of the rectory of Walton and Street. He died in 1466 as Master of the Collegiate Church of St Edmund, Salisbury.
John Lax moved in the highest circles, and for a time at least became rich. But back to that dispute between Lax and the three other Rectors, and successive Abbots of Glastonbury. It was about tithes, the ten per cent tax that had to be paid to the Church. But to what part of the Church? Should they go to the Abbot or to the Rector? It was a question of parish boundaries. Nowadays the only people who worry about parish boundaries are couples wanting to be married in a particular church. Do they live within the parish boundary or not? If you were a priest in the middle ages, parish boundaries could seriously affect your wealth.
May 15 1470: After due consideration and for the sake of peace for themselves & their successors the Abbot and Convent agree with William Bockett, the Rector, to making the following composition:-
The Abbot and Convent and their successors, to have the tithes of the Park, woods and Est and West Stretemore.
The Rector and his successors to have the tithes of 2 meadows and closes called Avensclose and Rowclose to the east of the Park and of 2 pastures and closes called Newman' closes adjoining the said 2 meadows on the east.
And here's the bit that I find fascinating:
The Rector of Strete, present and to come, to have for every year during which he continues resident in his Cure and Church or, at least, for a term of 3 years continuous or discontinuous personal residence, 10 cartloads of fuel in and of the woods and places in the neighbourhood of the Rectory in Walton, of which six shall be of "Hardewoode" and the other 4 of "vnderwoode". If the Rector is non-resident, for such year of non-residence he and his chaplain shall have 3 cartloads (2 of hardwood and 1 of underwood). He may take in a cartload as much as 8 oxen together can draw.
The Rector may also have the right of pasture for 8 oxen and one bull in the Abbot's pasture, from the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross to the Feast of the Exaltation of the same, for an annual payment of £3 to the Abbot and Convent.
So that's what the Rectors of Street lived on: tithes, fuel from the woods around, and their own farm animals.
The end of Glastonbury Abbey
After Glastonbury Abbey was shut down and Abbot Whiting killed on the Tor, the Rector, Thomas Bull, had to deal with secular authorities. The court in Westminster in 1543 granted him 33 shillings and four pence a year instead of the ten cartloads of fuel. This would be £1.66p in decimal money, but it represented a hefty sum in the 16th century.
Walter Raleigh
Now here's a familiar name. This is from the Parish Church records: Upon the xxiii day of October Anno Dni 1635 Walter Ralegh instituted into the p'sonage of Streate to be toke quiet and peacable possession of the church of Streate aforesaid, with all the right members & appertenances thereto belonging in the presence of
Tho. Close, clerke Tho. Smyth, clerke Thomas Helliar and others.
Upon the 22nd of November 1635 Mr. Walter Ralegh instituted into the p'sonage of Streate, subscribed all the 39 Articles of religion agreed upon in the convocation (1562) in the pish church of Streate in the time of divine service and gave his dasyned assent and consent therunto in the p'sence of the whole congregation witnesses there unto
Tho. Clyfe clerk Tho. Smyth clerk Tho. Rush Thomas Hellier
and many others.
How nice to have a nephew of the great courtier and sailor Sir Walter Raleigh living in Street! He soon became Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles I. He took his Doctorate of Divinity the year after he became Rector of Street. Except that he didn't live in Street.
He was vicar of Chedzoy already, and he also held the livings of Wilton S. Mary, Elingdon and Wroughton in Wiltshire. He was appointed Dean of St Burian, and then Dean of Wells, all while being Rector of Street. As far as we can tell, he lived in Chedzoy, and had a house in Wells. When the Civil War came he was ejected from his living, and compelled to fly to save his life. He was, however, taken prisoner at Bridgwater. Confined first for some years at Banwell, he was ultimately removed to his own house at Wells. There he was placed under the custody of a shoemaker, who added to his ability in leather the quality of being an inveterate and hasty Roundhead. He treated him with gross cruelty, and in the end stabbed him because he refused to show him a letter he had written to his wife.
I wrote a section about the parish church building at this stage, but it will have to wait for another occasion, perhaps for a meeting held in the church itself. There is too much to be said about people.
The Quakers
So let's return to people. The people called Quakers. They came to Street in 1655. The Society of Friends are so well known for pacifism, and the Quakers of Street are now such an established part of village life that it is hard to imagine the ructions of their early days here, around 1660.
The Bishop called the local Quaker farmer, Jasper Batt, 'the greatest seducer in the west, the most seditious person in the county.' He and Henry Gundry presented themselves once in the churchyard and lectured against the teachings of the Church of England.
They fell foul of the lawyers by refusing to take their hats off in court. They fell foul of the Rector by refusing to pay tithes. Gundry died in Ilchester gaol.
So let's try to understand how the first Quakers would have looked to the ordinary churchgoer in Street. George Fox the founder must have seemed an odd fellow. He was born in 1624; he worked for a shoemaker at one time, and then went to search for wisdom. In his autobiography George Fox tells of his quest. He didn't have much luck with the clergy. Here's one example: "I heard of a priest living about Tamworth, who was accounted an experienced man. I went seven miles to him, but found him like an empty, hollow cask." "At another time, as I was walking in a field on a First-day morning, the Lord opened unto me that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ." "I fasted much, walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came on; and frequently in the night walked mournfully about by myself." "One day, when I had been walking solitarily abroad, and was come home, I was taken up in the love of God, so that I could not but admire the greatness of His love; and while l was in that condition, it was opened unto me by the eternal light and power, and I therein clearly saw that all was done and to be done in and by Christ, and how He conquers and destroys this tempter the devil, and all his works, and is atop of him... The Lord opened me, that I saw all through these troubles and temptations. My living faith was raised, that I saw all was done by Christ the life, and my belief was in Him."
That was wonderful for Fox, and for those who chose to follow his teaching, but it felt threatening to others. It is said that Fox himself determined not to spend time or money on clothing, so he made himself leather clothes designed to last his whole lifetime. He must have looked strange, and perhaps smelled odd, too. As a 20th century Quaker wrote in a song:
With your old leather breeches and your shaggy shaggy locks
You are shaking the foundations of the world, George Fox.
Those in power didn't like the movement. During the reign of Charles II, 13,562 Quakers were arrested and imprisoned in England and 198 were transported as slaves, and 338 died in prison or of wounds received in violent assaults on their meetings.
Fox was 32 when a Quaker meeting was established in Street. He came to visit the meeting in 1663, wearing that leather suit no doubt. The Society of Friends had no use for what they called 'steeple-houses', and would not bury their dead in churchyards. The local Quaker burial ground was somewhere round the new part of Clarks Village, but there was no meeting house at first. In 1884 they met in Elizabeth Clothier's home. After the Toleration Act of 1689 they had four houses licensed for meetings, including one on the site of the Nat West bank, where the meeting room had a low ceiling, with a beam cut back to allow the tall businessman and preacher John Banks to stand and speak, between 1696 and 1710. Around the same period James Clothier was suffering fines and the confiscation of his livestock for refusing to pay tithes to the Rector Timothy Redman.
But In 1719 a Meeting House was built on land belonging to the Banks family. Quakers were gradually becoming respectable. As an aside, I must tell with sadness how just before Christmas I was speaking with a member of the Street Meeting who told me that even now they felt that they were being excluded by some other Street Christians, who claimed that because they did not practise baptism they were not true Christians. I sincerely hope that this was a misunderstanding.
To return, I will just mention the building of the present Meeting House in 1850, in my opinion one of the most attractive buildings in Street, and then I shall say no more about the Quakers; for no other reason than that they are so important to the village that they deserve a lecture of their own.
The Baptists
Who came to Street next? the Baptists, I think. James Clark wrote his childhood recollections in 1893, looking back to his earliest memories in 1815 when he was only three. "My father and mother were away from home, and a dear old woman named Nellie Palmer, who lived in a mud cottage with its pointing end to the road, close by where the Baptist Chapel now stands, was keeping house for them. ... One afternoon Nellie Palmer said she would take me for a walk to see how the new Baptist Chapel, then building, was getting on. We walked down Hindhayes Lane, which was not then stoned, and as we reached the point where Wilfred Road now joins it, the mud was so soft and deep we had to leave it and get over a stile into the field on the right, a path through which brought us into the Somerton Road. There at the corner of the lane was an old saw pit where boards were cut out to press cheeses. We found the Baptist Chapel just roofed in, and the carpenters were at work putting up the pews, and the dwelling house at the end of the chapel was being made ready for the Minister, Thomas Burnett, who afterwards had a school there for farmers' sons. When about eight years old I was sent to this school for a week or two. The chief supporters of the Baptist cause at that time were old farmer Gould and his sons, John, Thomas and Joseph; and John Crees and his family, who lived in Silver Lane."
I have been told nothing of the history of the Baptists until just after WW2, when that stalwart of the Salvation Army, Gordon Griffin, lived almost opposite the Baptists. He tells me that on a cold evening a strange man came and introduced himself as the new Baptist Pastor. Gordon's father told him that he wished him God's help, and that he would certainly need it. The chapel was all but derelict, apparently. It has come on a lot since then, and I believe that my son Charlie would tell you that he used to enjoy their weeknight children's meeting. The Street congregation does not belong to the Baptist Union, although the Baptist Union, I have been told, owns the buildings. The complexion of the church, and the degree to which they take part in united activities with other Christians depends much upon the Pastor of the time,
and I am glad that the Christians of Street were welcomed to the Chapel for a united Holy Communion last Holy Week, and that there was Baptist input in the United Service in the Parish Church last month.
The people called Methodists
And the next to arrive? The Methodists, in 1820. John Wesley preached at Oakhill and Shepton Mallett, but never came to Street. He wasn't so well received in Shepton: "Here the good curate, I was informed, had hired a silly man, with a few drunken companions, to make a disturbance." It was a properly Anglican disturbance: The silly man and his drunken companions tried to disrupt Wesley's meeting, not by throwing tomatoes, but by singing a psalm! Anyhow, in 1820 a Methodist moved from Frome to Street, and held meetings with Zechariah Seymour and Samuel Hodges.
And Neighbour Hawkins joined them, William Hawkins, who lived in Vestry Road. They used his cottage for their meetings, and there the first Methodist preaching took place.
It took the Methodists almost 20 years to outgrow the cottage. In fact in 1831, ten years after they started, they had only two members. It was the headmaster of the British School, Mr Sylvester, who got things humming, and by 1839 they were looking for a special building.
Cyrus Clark gave them the land in Silver Lane. No, not Silver Road, but round the corner in what is now Goswell Road, and the building was where the Salvation Army citadel is.
Many people will remember it, a handsome fairly classical facade. Remembering that Methodism was born in song, we shall expect that the singing was good.
In fact this is how it was described:
"It was music 'tis true, although some voices were flat, some a little to high.
While one was a little too hasty inclined,
another persisted in lagging behind."
Help was at hand; under the leadership of the energetic Edwin Dodge the singing improved. Unfortunately Edwin died in the Typhus epidemic, which must have been in 1852.
In 1854 they lashed out and spent £80 on an organ.
The Congregationalists
That was the year that the Congregationalists opened their fine new building on the High Street. There was a remarkable energy and enthusiasm for building new Churches and developing new Christian congregations at this time, when you consider that in 1853 the chief employer, Clarks, had only 640 workers.
A Lord and his two remarkable curates
The mid 19th century was also a remarkable period in the Church of England. The Rector was a peer of the realm, Lord John Thynne, a relative of the patron of the parish, the Marquess of Bath, and he spent a large amount of his own money on the parish church and in building a rectory in Street, which was inhabited by curates, since the Rector of Street and Walton lived in Walton.
Two curates were particularly notable: Nathaniel James Merriman was Assistant Curate 1840-1848, "a name still fragrant to those who remember his kindly and well-disposed nature." Wanting to understand his congregation better, he "became desirous of learning how to make boots and shoes, and notwithstanding the busy life lived, found time to do so. Esau Whitnell, a boot or shoe maker taking work from the factory, readily accepted the offer of his services, when spare time could be found in which to sit on the seat and learn the secrets of the art of St Crispin." Nathaniel was afterwards Bishop of Grahamstown, and his son, born in Street, Prime Minister of Cape Colony. Merriman Road and Park are named after that family.
The other curate was Charles Fuge Lowder, Assistant Curate 1843-1844, and afterwards Vicar of St. Peter's, London Docks, where he became greatly loved as a slum priest, particularly for his selfless devotion to his people during a cholera epidemic. The new Church of England Prayer Book lists him among the great and the good, and in some churches he is celebrated as a saint on 9th September. We have no road named after him, yet. But back to the Free Churches.
Sunday Schools flourished. The Methodists on March 31 1851 had 60 children attending in the morning and 48 in the afternoon. Next year they needed 3 gallons of milk for the Sunday School tea, and spent 2s on it.
Primitive Methodists
In 1852 other Methodists, called Primitive Methodists, began holding open air meetings in Street, and formed a society in 1863. By 1871 they too wanted a church building,
and who should lay the foundation stone of the £317 building but Cyrus' partner James Clark.
It was at the corner of High Street and Orchard Road, and is now an electrical and computer shop. Now there were two Methodist churches, Primitive and Wesleyan.
The Methodists buld again
By 1892 the Wesleyan Church had outgrown the Silver Lane building. As they looked around for land,
it was a Clark who again came to the rescue. William Clark sold them part of Middle House Orchard for £120 - and donated £200 towards the project, in effect giving thel and and more. The whole project was going to cost £2,000, too much for the congregation, so they appealed to the town. They pointed out in a brochure:
"Besides public worship the buildings are intended for Sunday School, (59)
Temperance, Evangelistic and all the various kinds of Christian social work by which the material and moral conditions of people can be improved.
On these grounds, especially, is the appeal for help made to friends outside the Methodist community."
They didn't mention the Street Society, but it clearly is one work by which the moral conditions of people is being improved.
The church was opened just in time for Christmas 1893, and the building where we are came two years later.
The different Methodist churches united nationally in 1932, but the congregations in Street did not combine until 1963. The High Street church failed by a few weeks to stay open to reach its centenary.
Salvation Army and Skeleton Army
The Salvation Army was a latecomer, in 1886. In fact William Booth's Volunteer Army only became the Salvation Army in 1878, so the movement reached Street just eight years after its foundation. A colourful and controversial character had much to do with its beginnings: Horatio Hodges.
In the history of Bowlingreen Mill, Hodges has a chapter all to himself. He was manager of the Mill, an appointment which William Clark at times regretted. "Horatio Hodges was a keen evangelist, and had formerly been a supporter of General Booth and the Salvation Army. However, he had fallen out with the Salvationists and founded his own 'Holiness Army' in Street of which he was commander in chief. this work interested him much more than running Avalon Leatherboard which he would leave to its own devices while he sallied forth in his pony and trap to preach the Word in the surrounding villages and rescue the local youths from the bottle. His methods at Bowlingreen were drastic and to ensure against truancy the night shift were locked in."
The Holiness Army met in a building that still stands, between the High Street and the south car park. Gordon Griffin tells the Salvation Army tradition that Horatio Hodges was woken up in the middle of the night in his manager's house, by a disturbance outside. He stuck his head out of an upstairs window, and was given no peace until he agreed to rejoin the Salvation Army.
The Holiness Army building became the Salvation Army's first citadel.
They did not have an easy time in those early days. They were persecuted by the activities of the local Skeleton Army, who used to march in front of the band singing:
Oh the Donkey and the Lamb
They belong to Rasher's band.
The three principal characters in the Salvation Army around the 1890s were Horatio Hodges, nicknamed The Rasher, a Mr Peddle, known as The Donkey, and Richard Lamb. But despite persecution the first Captain, Emma Smith, could write: "Since we opened three weeks ago the people are beginning to find that the Salvation Army is just what is wanted here. We have gained a footing, much to the disappointment of his satanic majesty.
The first Sunday we opened a wretched back-slider was in the Hall, under the influence of drink, and did not forget to let us know he was there. Since then he has found something better than the public house can give. After we closed our meeting the other night five more volunteered for Salvation, which we believe were good cases, making 18 for the three weeks."
Shortly after the Methodists moved out of their Goswell Road home, the Salvation Army moved in. General Booth himself came to visit Street in August 1906, and was entertained by the Clarks at Millfield. Alice Clark is with him in the carriage outside Crispin Hall. The Clarks laid on a dinner fit for such an eminent guest, but General Booth said that he could not possibly eat such rich food when so many people were starving, and went to his room with a very plain snack. On that occasion he was more a follower of John the Baptist than of Jesus, in my opinion.
The corps flourished, with a good Sunday School in 1907,
a band in 1912 that was allowed to play inside Cheddar Caves,
and songsters in 1942 who sang, it seems, in the Cathedral. How much further can you go in respectability? By 1974 the handsome Methodist chapel was collapsing, undermined by an underground stream,
and they built a practical new hall, to the regret of some and rejoicing from others.
A new Anglican church
After the Baptists, all the new churches had been built in the centre of Street, where the people were. The Church of England was left on the edge, until 1898, when the Tin Church was built on the site of a cottage that had suffered in the Great Fire of 1863?. It was meant to last for 20 years, until enough money had been collected to build a permanent structure.
It lasted until 1989, when it was beyond repair, and was replaced by the present Mission Church, its foundation stone laid by a future Archbishop of Canterbury.
Variant faiths
Groups that begin from orthodox Christian belief and reinterpret it to form something different have also come and gone in Street: Swedenborgians, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses.
Followers of
Swedenborg used to meet in Orchard Cottage, Orchard Road, in the childhood of Muriel Mudie, who wrote
an article about them for the Fosse Way Magazine.
Many Street people remember the
Christian Science Reading Room which was built with the help of a member of the Clark family who turned to the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy when she was ill and beyond the help of medicine.
I seem to remember that
Jehovah's Witnesses
met for some short time in the Henderson Centre, then a doctors' surgery. If you can help me with this, please use the contact page to give the facts.
A miscellany
Photographs from the recent excellent display by the Congregational,
now United Reformed, Church will have to remind us of the varied activities of all the churches.
The Congregationalists had their maypole dancing and their pantomimes.
The Methodists had imaginatively themed bazaars, and so on.
All enjoyed Sunday School outings.
House Churches
But the times they were a-changing, and Christianity came under heavy and sustained attack. One response has been the charismatic movement, represented in Street by the Harvest Church that meets in Elmhurst School, mainly formed by members of the Baptist congregation, and latterly the New Life Church meeting in the Wessex Hotel, formed by a leader of the Harvest Church. The keynotes here are commitment and freedom in worship. I am told by a friend that the differences between them are minute compared with what they have in common, and that if you were parachuted into a Sunday gathering of either church you would be hard put to it to know which one it was.
Here is a preacher at the Harvest Church speaking about the church: "I know you have come from different backgrounds and have been led of the Lord to establish an Independent Pentecostal fellowship. I know that over the last number of years the Lord has been ministering to you, blessing you, strengthening you spiritually and numerically and has been bringing you to this very point in time when he has come by his Spirit and said, "I want to take you on in a new way, a way that you have never been before." A way where the glory of his presence is going to break in upon us. A way where the fire of the Holy Spirit is going to fall upon lives who are on the altar for him."
There are many in the other churches who feel just the same. But I must not slip into preaching mode. My task has been historical.
I leave you with this picture, found in the Parish Church when it was cleared ready for the recent renewal. Many more photos were found, all labelled. This one was not. Can you help, please?
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