British History online records that Primitive Methodists at Chiseldon registered a building in 1835. In the 1851 Sunday Census average attendance there on a Sunday was reckoned to be 121 people in the morning and 120 in the afternoon.
The souvenir Official Handbook of the Brinkworth and Swindon Centenary District Synod held in 1910 records that:
“The first building was erected in 1853. In 1896 a new Church and Schools were built, which are a credit to the Trustees.
- Number of sittings: 172
- School accommodation: 90
- Number of members: 36
- Total cost: £800
- Present debt: £185″
I sang here in the 1960s, but it is no longer used as a chapel.
The Primitive Methodist Magazine of February 1854 includes an account by J Dobinson of the opening of the chapel on December 4th and 5th 1853 by Mr J Best of Radstock who preached “three profitable sermons.” Other preachers were I Humphries and Mr Dobinson. The article refers to the Prims having had a chapel in the village for many years, but it had become too small; its replacement was “a neat, substantial and commodious edifice.”
Mr Dobinson spells the village Chisseldon, not the current spelling. At one time the village name signs on the main Swindon to Marlborough Road through the village proclaimed Chiseldon at one end and Chisledon at the other.
The 1896 opening of the Primitive Methodist chapel and school at Chiseldon in the Swindon First Circuit is reported in the 1897 Primitive Methodist magazine (page 74)
References
British history online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66536#n493 accessed August 2014
Primitive Methodist Magazine February 1854 p112
Primitive Methodist magazine 1897 page 74
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I’ve added two photographs of the former chapel in 2023 provided by Peter Sketch. Peter comments that the conversion to residential use has been done very sympathetically.
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