Clunton Primitive Methodist chapel
Linda Robertson
This chapel was built in 1870. It was for sale when I photographed it in July 2013.
Over the door the words still clearly call upon those who enter, or who pass by, “Prepare to meet thy God.” This can be either an invitation or a warning, according as people respond to it. It would be good for us to pray that those words, earnestly engraved there by Primitive Methodist believers in 1870, will still be noticed and impress the readers’ hearts and minds today.
On visiting the chapel in February 2020 it had been named as ‘The Old Spice Works’
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The next village along is Aston-on-Clun, where the (now closed) Baptist chapel has the same text (Prepare to meet thy God) over the door. I have seen the same text over the door of the Primitive Methodist chapel (also closed, alas) in Swampton, Hampshire, and also over the door at Penyffordd, where you have to look hard to see it as they have regrettably painted it out.
The Primitive Methodist magazine for August 1853 contains an account by WE Saunders of the opening of Clunton Primitive Methodist chapel in the Bishop’s Castle circuit in 1853, 17 years before the chapel pictured above. It was located on Church -yard-bank.
Clunton was a small village which had been missioned thirty years previously: in 1841 it contained 69 houses and 304 people.
The new chapel was built of stone with a blue Bangor slate roof on land given by Mr Edward Williams. It accommodated 70 people. Although they had problems finding suitable trustees, by the time of opening they had raised over £41 of the estimated £75 cost. The rest had been raised by borrowing a sovereign from a number of creditors, interest free.
Further information on this chapel can be viewed by following the link to Shropshire’s Non-Conformist Chapels
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