Building record WPT 038 - Woolpit Methodist Chapel

The disused Primitive Methodist chapel in Woolpit lies on Heath Road approximately 500 m south-east of the parish church. Although now at the heart of the village, immediately opposite the Health Centre and close to the school, its position was relatively isolated in the 19th century. The building is a simple rectangular red-brick structure of three bays in the Mock Gothic style, with a hipped slate roof, arched windows and gault-brick dressing. A plaque above the entrance door in its roadside gable bears the date 1861, and the site is depicted as the empty corner of a field on the tithe map of 1845 – although documentary evidence suggests an earlier Primitive Methodist chapel had existed on Woolpit Heath approximately 1.5 km to the south-east. A centenary history of the building published in 1961 refers to a purchase of land from Walter Lord, who was recorded as the tenant of the adjoining windmill in 1845. The interior consists of a single hall with a raised dais behind a turned balustrade of stained pine at its western end and a number of late-20th century anterooms which interrupt the original windows to the east. The dais is not contemporary with the fabric as its wainscot panelling conceals earlier blue painted plaster, and no original fixtures or fittings survive.
At first sight the building appears to be a single, unified structure, but the easternmost of its three bays (as defined by gault-brick pilasters) is a late-19th century extension. The new brickwork was carefully matched to the old, but is darker and more uniform in colour and the bay is significantly narrower. The author of the 1961 history was sceptical, noting ‘it is stated that the chapel has been somewhat extended and there are those living today who say they can remember a garden being in front of the present building’. The First Edition Ordnance Survey of 1884 shows this garden dividing the then eastern gable from the road, but it had disappeared by the edition of 1904. A small proportion of Methodist chapels possessed burial grounds that were often short-lived and poorly documented, and if the garden was designed for this purpose it is possible that inhumations still lie beneath the floor of the extension. The date plaque was presumably re-set in the new gable, and the present dais is likely to have been inserted as part of this refurbishment. The chapel remains an attractive example of Victorian Mock Gothic brickwork, despite its unfortunate re-pointing in cement, but given its alterations and lack of original fixtures is unlikely to meet the strict criteria for listing (S1).