Derby Campion Street Primitive Methodist Chapel

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• I suspect the original Prims, with their motto of “Freedom, equality, fraternity” would be encouraged to see the former chapel in use as a community centre for the surrounding area of terraced houses – serving exactly the people that characterised the Primitive Methodists.
  When the Community Association moved into the chapel in 2008, it was a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I visited the chapel on April 4th 2019 to photograph the outside and found a welcome inside. The buildings retain some original features, including cast iron pillars. The tall, narrow part of the building (on the right in the photograph), which occupies the footprint of a terraced house, is in use as an office and store room. The large room (on the left in the photograph) is used for a range of social activities and, although it has a false ceiling, retains its gallery on three sides. When the Community Association took over the buildings, the larger room had a pulpit in the corner which has since been removed
  The lady who showed me round explained that the tall, narrow part of the Community Centre was the original chapel. However, I’ve looked at some early Ordnance Survey maps of the area. There is no chapel (or any Campion Street come to that) on the OS 1:2,500 map of 1884. On the 1899 map the larger part of the building (with the yellow painted walls in the photograph) is in place, but where the tall narrow part is, to the south of it, there is no building at all. There is just a gap before number 7 Campion Street. The gap is filled in by the 1913 map. One other thought is that if the tall narrow part was the original chapel, wouldn’t it have had a door at the front? The yellow part does have a central door on Campion Street, although it has been rendered over externally. So is the tall, narrow part an addition?

  By Christopher Hill (05/04/2019)