Worship, Social Gatherings and the ‘More-than-Wesleyan’: The Multiple Uses and Congregational Experiences of London’s Wesleyan Methodist Chapels (1851–1932)

Using two geographically contrasting case studies, this paper explores the multiple ways in which London’s purpose-built Wesleyan chapels were used between the 1851 religious census and the reunification of the Methodist Church in 1932. Specifically focusing on chapels in the Bow and Highgate areas of London, it explores how the uses of these spaces varied over time and space, highlighting similarities and differences between urban and suburban Wesleyanism. Identifying three categories of chapel use associated with worship, social gatherings, and more-than-Wesleyan uses, it traces the practices, people and objects connected to these different uses and argues that they can provide insights into historical congregational experiences. As such, this paper makes a rare historical contribution to broader discussions within current geographical studies of religion about individuals’ everyday experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality.


Introduction
Using two geographically contrasting case studies, this paper will explore the multiple ways in which London's purpose-built Wesleyan chapels were used between the 1851 religious census and the reunification of the Methodist Church in 1932. Considering how the uses of these spaces varied over time and space, it will reflect on what they reveal about congregational experiences of Wesleyan spaces in different parts of the city. As such, this paper will make a rare historical contribution to broader geographical discussions about individuals' everyday experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality. 1 Initiated as a radical movement within the Church of England during the eighteenth century, Methodism gained its name in response to its members' methodical approaches to religious disciplines such as prayer, worship, and fasting. 2 After the death of its founder John Wesley in 1791, Methodism was established as a denomination outside of the Church of England and during the nineteenth century split into factions, including the Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists. Although differentiated by theology, politics, and practice, these denominations shared core beliefs in salvation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, all emphasised the importance of converting others to faith via evangelicalism, and all prioritised Methodist fellowship in order to encourage each other in faith. 3 This paper will focus on London's Wesleyan Methodists, the most numerically significant Methodist denomination in the city during this period. 4 Self-identifying as the original inheritors of John Wesley's beliefs and practices, by the mid-nineteenth century Wesleyans had begun to dispense with the most radical elements of the movement's original practices and strived for the status of an established Church. 5 They did embrace elements of the Victorian social gospel through their own 'Forward Movement'; a set of ideas, rather than an organisation or campaign group that pushed for a more democratic denomination that could engage with all society's social scales through spaces such as central halls and mission centres. 6 However, they simultaneously erected large, architecturally impressive chapels to emphasise the presence and permanence of Wesleyanism across Britain and cultivate their appeal to the middle classes. 7 Much has been written about both the external style and internal arrangement of Wesleyan chapels, Central Halls and mission halls, but little attention has been paid to the intersections between their design and use within London's diverse nineteenth-and early twentieth-century landscape. 8 In her research into the changing design and use of the Archway Methodist Central Hall between 1934 and 2010, Angela Connelly demonstrated the benefits of thinking about Methodist spaces as simultaneously physically designed and socially constructed spaces. 9 However, specifically focusing on Wesleyan chapels, this paper will go one step further. Drawing on insights from Methodist history, geographical studies of everyday religion, and anthropological material religion approaches, it will use purpose-built Wesleyan chapels as starting points to explore congregational experiences of Wesleyanism between 1851 and 1932.
Much has been written about the changing nature of faith and faith buildings in London during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 10 However, London's Methodist communities have often been overlooked within Methodist histories, due to a broadly held consensus that London's Methodist communities were unrepresentative of British Methodism more broadly. 11 Consequently, established within the broader literature on urban Methodism, this paper will contribute to a small number of studies that have shown how vast archival resources left by London's Methodist communities contain invaluable insights into both the history and historical geography of Methodism and religion, in London and cities more broadly. 12 In addition, drawing on increasing interdisciplinary interest in 'the everyday', this paper will disrupt Methodist histories' focus on the denomination's leaders, theology, and official practices. 13 While geographers of contemporary religion, faith, and spirituality have paid ever-increasing attention to individuals' personal engagements in broadly defined spiritual practices in a huge array of different spaces, despite some notable exceptions, historical geography has yet to make the same enthusiastic engagement with questions about the meaning of 'religion' or how the people of the past experienced it. 14 To some extent this is a result of the limitations placed on historical research by the nature of the archives that have survived. Often official documents of religious institutions, they rarely contain references to the ideas, opinions, or experiences of ordinary congregation members.
However, historians and historical geographers have begun to draw on anthropological ideas around material religion and demonstrate how creative approaches to existing archives can enable insights into historical congregations' experiences of religion. 15 Building on these approaches, this paper will not only reflect on exactly what happened in London's Wesleyan chapels, but will also consider how these different activities resulted in particular amalgamations of objects, practices, and human relationships. It will ask what congregants were doing, who and what (people and objects) they were engaging with, and how they were engaging with them during different activities. Focusing on these shifting interrelationships, this paper will argue that Wesleyan chapels gained a multitude of meanings as their uses changed across time and space. Furthermore, it will show that it is possible to gain insights into congregational experiences of nineteenth-and early-twentiethcentury Wesleyanism by tracing chapels' fluctuating meanings and the many different spiritual, social, and material engagements that congregation members had when involved with different activities within chapel spaces.
To begin, this paper will introduce its two geographically diverse case studies -Wesleyan Methodist communities in Bow and Highgate. Then, it will explore the varying uses of these chapels in three sections: worship, social gatherings and more-than-Wesleyan uses of chapel spaces. While broadly identifying the range of activities that occurred in London's chapels, each of these sections will focus on particular case studies to facilitate in-depth analysis of the effect of particular amalgamations on practices, people and objects on congregational experiences.

London's Wesleyan Methodism Chapels, 1851-1932
In 1935 the Methodist Church conducted an audit of their property in London and created a map which marked the peripheries of London as Edmonton in the north, East Ham in the east, West Norwood in the south and West Ealing in the west. 16 This map marks this paper's area of interest, but its specific case studies have been selected through consideration of the patterns of Wesleyan chapel construction and popularity illustrated by various religious surveys conducted in London between 1851 and 1932. 17 These sources suggest that throughout this period large numbers of chapels were built in London's developing suburbs and that inner-city areas found it consistently difficult to construct enough chapels for the ever-growing population. They also indicate that there were particular areas of central London where Wesleyanism had a greater presence. In the middle of the nineteenth century they suggest that Wesleyanism had flourishing congregations in areas of west London (such as Chelsea), while by the beginning of the twentieth century they indicate that Wesleyan resources were focused on the East End of the city.
Responding to these trends, this paper will focus on two contrasting geographical areas -Poplar and Bow in London's East End and the north London suburb of Highgate -facilitating exploration of the extent to which the uses of Wesleyan chapels varied in London's different geographical contexts. In each area this paper will focus on purpose-built Wesleyan chapels arranged within the Bow (later Poplar and Bow) and Highgate Circuits. A Methodist organisational unit, 'circuits' were (and are) a set of chapels, mission halls, and other Methodist properties located within a specific geographical area that shared ministers, resources, and practices. 18 Established in 1861, the Bow Circuit was positioned east of the City of London and initially encompassed Bow, Bromley-by-Bow and Mile-End, but was extended in 1900 to include Poplar and the Isle of Dogs ( Figure 1). As a result, the number of chapels and mission halls in the Circuit regularly changed, but at its largest it included six chapels (and various mission halls): Bow Road, Bow Common, Old Ford, Poplar, Millwall, Cubitt Town. 19 Established over ten years later in 1873, the Highgate Circuit was located at the northern extremity of nineteenth-century London and expanded well beyond the geographical boundaries of Highgate itself. Located in a quickly developing late nineteenthcentury London suburb, at its largest it was comprised of six chapels and various mission halls located in Holloway, Archway, Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Highgate ( Figure 2). 20 Table   1 provides an overview of the relative size of chapel congregations in both circuits in 1888 and 1904.  Table 1 near here] When initially established the Bow Circuit was located within a middle-class suburb, but as the century progressed the surrounding area developed into a comfortable working-class district, before becoming increasingly deprived as a result of its geographical proximity to the working-class docklands of Poplar and the Isle of Dogs. 21 Although never a flexible mission circuit that simply focused on evangelical practices, the Bow Circuit did respond to the changing needs of its local community and adopted new practices in line with the social gospel of the contemporarily developing Wesleyan Forward Movement. 22 The Highgate Circuit's position on a steep hill north of the City of London, meant that until the latter decades of the nineteenth century it was difficult to access and was known as a space of retreat from urban life for the wealthy middle class. When new transport links developed between Highgate and the City of London, the area became more accessible and developed into a predominately wealthy suburb. 23 In response, the Highgate Circuit constructed new, increasingly grand and impressive chapels in developing residential areas, which catered for professional members of the middle-class and their servants. These different architectural styles are indicative of how the Circuit's financial fortunes declined as the economic status of local residents changed. However, it also demonstrates how Wesleyans were keen to use architectural styles that would appeal to the tastes of the community they were building them for. Contemporaries believed that while gothic architectural features may appeal to middle-class congregants, working class communities would find them alienating. 26 Therefore, the neogothic turrets and patterned brick work of the Jackson's Lane Chapel in the Highgate Circuit, opened in 1905, not only demonstrates the differences between the wealth of the Bow and Highgate Circuits, but also the sorts of individuals the Highgate Circuit was trying to appeal to ( Figure 6). 27 [Position Figure 6 near here].
However, despite their array of architectural styles, there were also many similarities between the design of the chapels in the Bow and Highgate Circuits. In 1850, the Methodist artist and architect F.J. Jobson's published Chapel and School Architecture, an architectural treatise for the ideal design of Wesleyan chapels. Jobson recommended that all Wesleyan chapels should integrate vestries and classrooms into their internal arrangement to provide a variety of spaces that could be flexibly used for multiple activities. 28 The proposed ground plan of Jackson's Lane Chapel in Highgate demonstrates how this was implemented in practice. In addition to the sanctuary space in the middle of the chapel used for Sunday services, with pews and a central aisle, the chapel had galleries, small vestries on either side of the pulpit, classrooms, a large infants' school, and a church parlour ( Figure 7). The remnants of surviving chapels, historical ground plans, and descriptions of demolished chapels suggest Jobson's recommendations were adopted by all the chapels in the Bow and Highgate Circuits. 29 As a result, none of the chapels in either circuit were singular rooms or spaces and each are best described as complexes. 30 Reflecting on how these complexes were used, this paper will consider the extent to which the uses of Wesleyan chapels varied across London's diverse nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century landscape and the impact this had on congregational experiences of Wesleyanism.

Worship
Worship was a fundamental use of all nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Wesleyan chapels, including prayer, sung worship, reading and preaching from the Bible, and divine encounter. However, worship took different forms in different chapels, on different days of the week, and at different times of the day. Over the course of a week, a single chapel could host several Sunday services, numerous mid-week services, regular prayer meetings, weekly class meetings (where congregants were encouraged and supported in their faith), and love feasts (time to share testimonies of God's faithfulness and provision). Specifically discussing the diversity of Sunday services, this section will explore the variations between the spiritual uses of Wesleyan chapels in different areas of London.
All Wesleyan chapels held at least one Sunday service and many hosted two or three. There were some elements found in all these Sunday gatherings, including reading and preaching from the Bible and singing hymns. 31 However, the formats of Sunday services were different in different chapels, at different times of the day, and changed over the course of this paper's period of study. Reflecting Methodism's Anglican heritage, Methodist liturgy -stipulating prayers and scriptures for Sunday morning and evening prayer meetings, litany and rites for the Lord's Supper, baptisms, matrimony, communion of the sick, burial of the dead and ordinations -had its roots in the Book of Common Prayer. 32  They explained that morning services were often more sacramental, stuck more strictly to the official liturgy, and were attended by wealthier members of the local community. In contrast, they described how evening services dispensed with liturgical structures to serve a more evangelical purpose and were often attended by housewives and maids whose domestic duties prevented them from attending morning services. 34 A programme for the morning, afternoon and evening anniversary services at Archway Road Chapel in 1885 supports these observations. While the morning service was the most formal of the three, including a collect, hymns and a sermon, the afternoon service (specifically aimed at children) simply comprised of hymns, and the evening service was positioned somewhere between the two, containing and 1938 and another respondent to Clive Field's questionnaires, noted that Sunday evening services were more popular in Poplar due to the habits of the local residents (a pattern that Table 1 demonstrates was already emerging in 1888). 37 Often working six-day weeks, male members of the Bow Circuit generally prioritised sleep over chapel on Sunday mornings and female members were unable to attend due to their domestic commitments. 38 Furthermore, the overtly evangelical Bow Circuit reduced the formal liturgy in their evening services, and even held magic lantern and cinema services in their chapels on Sunday evenings, to make them more approachable for the 'unchurched' local community. 39 In contrast, Mr Bevis W.
H. Ridley, who was a member of Highgate Circuit between 1919 and 1975, described how morning services following abridged Anglican liturgy were attended by long-standing influential members of chapels' congregations, and were the most popular services in the circuit (a pattern that Table 1  Consequently, the material differences between various Sunday service practices further contributed to the various congregational experiences that these events created.
Therefore, although Sunday services were a key element of Wesleyan practices in both the Bow and Highgate Circuits between 1851 and 1932, they were not singular or cohesive activities. The Highgate Circuit's morning services closely followed Wesleyan liturgy, but by the twentieth century its evening services like those held in the Bow Circuit were less structured. Reflecting the demographic of the congregations they were trying to appeal to, these service practices contributed to different relational bonds between congregation members and levels of control of congregational bodies. Furthermore, the material variations which accompanied these service types, also influenced congregational experiences by creating different sensory atmospheres.

Social gatherings
In addition to worship, Wesleyan chapels were also regularly used to host social gatherings.
In combination with events such as class meetings and love feasts, chapels organised social gatherings to foster networks of congregational fellowship that would encourage and support individuals in their faith. Simultaneously, as part of the same social conscience that informed developments in Wesleyans' Sunday services, they also hosted social activities that would appeal to 'unchurched' members of their local communities. 48 Focusing on two examples of social gatherings hosted in the Bow and Highgate Circuits, this section will reflect on the changes which occurred to these activities in London between 1851 and 1932, consider how these alternative uses of chapel spaces further contributed to their many identities, and suggest how these activities informed congregational experiences of this denomination.

Chapels from both the Bow and Highgate Circuits regularly organised social gatherings. 49
These gatherings took different forms and changed over time. During the 1860s, 70s and 80s, most were tea meetings. 50 By the 1890s, as the ideas of the Forward Movement became more prominent and within the continuing context of 'muscular Christianity', the range of social gatherings began to expand to include musical concerts, recreational groups (tennis and cricket clubs), and gatherings for particular demographic groups (young men and older children). 51 In both circuits, the diversity and regularity of social gatherings increased further during the early twentieth century. While occasional tea meetings continued to be organised, 52 they were less common than sports groups, 53 fetes and parties, 54 and theatrical and musical competitions and performances. 55 Interestingly, although the Bow and Highgate Circuits were operating in different social contexts, there were strikingly similar patterns between the type and frequency of social activities they organised. members 'sustained bruises' as they missed the buffets on they were meant to land, the winner of the bun eating competition had indigestion after swallowing one bun whole, and those whose identities were guessed via the shape of their nose not only had to push their nose through the hole in the screen, but also had the strange experience of having this 'appendage' stroked and prodded by other members of the party. 58 While these party games and the sensory experiences which accompanied them would have been an unusual -even unique -appropriation of the chapel's vestry, similar social gatherings that resulted in particular congregational experiences happened on a regular basis, and members of the Holly Park Chapel choir would probably have remembered these activities and how they informed their experience of the vestry long after the fun and games were over.
In addition to temporarily using spaces in Wesleyan chapels for social gatherings, communities within both the Bow and Highgate Circuits also appropriated particular spaces as (semi-)permanent locations for specific groups or organisations. For example, in the early twentieth century, the Poplar and Archway Road Chapels permanently set spaces aside for the fellowship of young men and women. 59 By establishing single social uses for particular areas within their chapel complexes, these communities created contexts in which young men and women could attend social activities without engaging with the spaces, people, or practices in the rest of the complex. This would have influenced congregational experiences of these spaces by restricting interactions between different age groups and limiting the extent to which the younger community experienced chapel complexes as simultaneously spiritual and social spaces. However, congregational responses to the activities that took place in these permanent social spaces illustrate how chapel communities still considered them to be a fundamental element of their chapel complexes. For example, in 1904 there were complaints about the level of noise emanating from the young men's room at Poplar Chapel and in 1913 there was controversy when the young men at Archway Road Chapel requested that they be allowed a billiard table in their clubroom. In the first instance, the noise made by the social activities engaged in by the Poplar Chapel's young men, disrupted class and prayer meetings that were happening in other parts of the chapel complex, while the young men from the Archway Road Chapel's request for a billiard table roused concerns about the possibility of gambling on the chapel's premises. In the end, the Poplar Chapel requested that the young men be more considerate of others using the chapel and how the noise they were making might affect them, while the Archway Road Chapel's trustees provided a billiard table for the young men's clubroom, but stipulated that only chapel members were allowed to use it and that no money was to change hands while games were played. 60 Therefore, the activities and behaviours undertaken in chapels spaces used for particular social practices, had the potential to influence the identity of the whole chapel and affect congregational sensory experiences throughout these locations.
Often held in the same vestries and classrooms used for mid-week services and prayer meetings, social gatherings continually introduced alternative activities distinctly different from the practices associated with divine worship. As a result, they redesigned these architectural spaces through the practices, social exchanges, and material objects they required and facilitated. Ranging from tea parties to choir concerts, recreational clubs to sewing meetings, the sorts of social activities Wesleyans hosted in London changed between 1851 and 1932. However, there was a striking parity between the way that these social practices developed in both the Bow and Highgate Circuits, suggesting the Wesleyan social activities were similar throughout the city. These social events resulted in multiple embodied and emotional experiences -such as bruises, indigestion, and disconnection between age groups -that would not have occurred in Wesleyan chapels if they had simply been used as the locations of divine worship. Therefore, thinking about the variety of ways in which Wesleyan chapels were used provides insights into the consistencies and varieties between congregational experiences of Wesleyanism in London between 1851 and 1932.

More-than-Wesleyan uses
In addition to Wesleyan uses of chapel complexes, chapels in the Bow and Highgate Circuits also hosted activities not directly associated with, or organised by, their chapel communities.
Large, conveniently located (sub)urban institutions, chapels provided expedient locations for charitable meetings, medical centres, secular business practices, and political gatherings. 61 While grateful for the additional income received by renting their spaces to external users, Wesleyan communities took steps to carefully choose and monitor more-than-Wesleyan uses and users of their spaces to ensure that they were appropriate. For example, despite close ties between the nineteenth-century Wesleyan Church and the contemporary Temperance movement, individual chapels carefully scrutinised requests from temperance societies to use their chapel spaces. In 1884 the Archway Road Chapel trustees granted The Temperance Society permission to use their chapel for the society's annual meeting on the condition that, because the society did not have a direct link to the Wesleyan Conference, the names of the chairman and speakers were provided in advance. 62 Indeed, over ten years later in 1895, when the trustees became aware that Sir Wilfrid Lawson -the Liberal MP for the Cockermouth division of Cumbria, who was outspoken in his support for temperance and home rule in Ireland -was listed as the society's chief speaker, Archway Road's trustees refused the society permission to use the chapel explaining that they were 'of opinion that the peace and prosperity of the church would be best presented by the meeting not being held in …thirty of forty women rose to their feet and began to shout, 'Votes for Women!'.
More than that, they chained themselves to the pews, for the architecture, being Gothic, lent itself to that manoeuvre. 67 Lax reflected on the transgressive nature of these actions, describing how the women responded to Buxton's appealed for them to moderate their behaviour in light of the 'sacred' space in which they were located, by arguing that ''Votes for Women' was a sacred cause.' 68 He therefore understood how alternative, in this instance uncontrolled, uses of Wesleyan space could serve to disrupt chapel identities. He was also aware of how alternative uses of chapels' material culture could affect congregational experiences in these spaces. Observing that the protesting Suffragettes were able to secure their position within the chapel by chaining themselves to the gothic pews ( Figure 5), he understood how the chapel's highly praised gothic features, initially implemented in response to the theological appropriateness of this style, had been re-appropriated for a particular political cause. Finally, Lax was also conscious of the impact this event had on congregational experiences of the chapel space.
Describing how the chapel's stewards were 'nonplussed' at the women's actions and noting that the protest 'gave the historic touch to an ordinary anniversary meeting', he clearly felt that this alternative use of the chapel space surprised regular congregation members, remained long in their memories, and changed their perception of that space forever. 69 Therefore, more-than-Wesleyan uses of Wesleyan chapels complicated the meanings of Wesleyan chapels and the experiences that congregation members had within them. While political engagement was common within London's nineteenth-and early twentieth-century chapels, more-than-Wesleyan uses of these spaces opened them to a broader range of users, re-appropriated Wesleyan material culture or material practices for alternative purposes and introduced new practices into these spaces. Some of these actions were particularly disruptive and would have permanently changed congregants' perceptions of their chapel spaces.

Conclusions
Consideration of the Wesleyan chapels in London's Bow and Highgate's Circuits has illustrated the variety of ways in which these spaces were used. Specifically, it has demonstrated how Methodist spaces were used for Wesleyan worship, prayer and spiritual development; Wesleyan fellowship, social action and social interactions; and more-than-Wesleyan charitable, medical, commercial, and political practices. These broad categories of practice changed at different rates in different parts of London between 1851 and 1932.
Divine worship practices developed dramatically in both the Bow and Highgate Circuits throughout this period and there were significant differences between these practices in both.
In contrast, developments in the sorts of social gatherings conducted in Wesleyan chapels followed a similar pattern in both circuits and more-than-Wesleyan political uses of Wesleyan chapels were also conducted in both. Therefore, despite the huge differences between the trajectories and social geographies of the areas in which the Bow and Highgate Circuits were located, consideration of the breadth of the activities which occurred within their chapels -rather than just their Sunday services -suggests that there were more similarities between the ways these spaces were used than may be expected.
The many different uses of Bow and Highgate's Wesleyan spaces introduced diverse practices, people, and objects. Some were temporary additions, while others were more permanent. Nevertheless, they all changed the identity of Wesleyan spaces and affected how they were experienced by congregations. The examples included in this paper have demonstrated how these people, objects, and practices transformed chapels from spaces of sacred interaction into spaces of play and enjoyment, from spaces of religious community into spaces of separation and distinction, and from spaces of communal belief into spaces of aggressive political action. Furthermore, these alternative activities resulted in specific embodied movements, sensory experiences, and emotional responses and therefore contributed to a range of different congregational experiences. These spatial identities and congregational experiences often co-existed, becoming more-or-less important at different points in the rhythm of chapels daily, weekly, and annual routines, or momentarily disrupted these rhythms.
Consequently, this paper has traced something of the geographical variety of the experiences that congregations would have had of Wesleyanism in London between 1851 and 1932. It has shown that while it is rare to gain access to detailed, written reflections on congregants' everyday experiences of Wesleyan spaces and how they varied during the regular rhythms of chapel life, there is evidence that can contribute insights into these experiences. While the conclusions this paper has drawn often rely on imaginative approaches to the archival material, they are rooted in the documents London's Wesleyan communities left and demonstrate how even the smallest reference to everyday activities can contribute to larger narratives of personal, everyday experiences.