Norfolk, Newcastle and all points north

Caring for heritage places can be a very exciting mission opportunity, but it can also cause financial concerns and heartache. No chapel steward wants to be the one to close the doors on a history of worship that may be well over 200 years.

As I travelled around at the beginning of August, it struck me that we measure our success as evangelists in very different ways. Church heritage can attract in people who might not go into a church for worship, but once there are often open to discussion with the stewards who welcome them, and that can become quite profound and be about their lives, spiritual condition and the relevance of faith. However, it's a moot point whether those people would ever come back to that church to join in with Sunday worship, even for one week. It's certainly unlikely if the visitors are passing through a place as tourists.

What we cannot know, however, is how the Holy Spirit has touched those people in that encounter - how we may have helped to change for the better their relationship with God and other people and their perceptions of the value of His Church.

That's why it's not enough to preserve our heritage. It's vital that we use our heritage to tell our story - why and how local people established their Methodist meetings and the impact that has had - and continues to have - on our society.

The oldest Methodist church in use in East Anglia is in Walsingham - a market town well known for its shrines and pilgrimages relating to the Blessed Virgin Mary. A Wesleyan society was formed in 1779, and John Wesley visited Walsingham in 1781 and preached in Friday Market. He recorded in his journal visiting the Abbey and Friary, and lamented the damage caused during the Dissolution. The Methodist chapel was built in 1794. (Most of the downstairs interior is Victorian, but the Georgian box pews remain upstairs: just visible in this picture.) Today the chapel congregation regularly support the town's welcome to thousands of pilgrims, including many young people.

Another oldest chapel on my trip was at Dunbar: the oldest Methodist chapel in Scotland. The picture shows sunset at the harbour.

But its a pretty close run thing - Arbroath's octagonal chapel is only a few years younger: here's the present interior.

Arbroath is also a coastal town, made famous by its 'smokies' (smoked haddock). You can even get them in Arbroath in batter with chips!




And then there were the churches with grand schemes for further engaging with their local communities, which will include through their Methodist heritage: Broad Street in Spalding, the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church 'Nicolson Square' and Brunswick in Newcastle. If you live locally and are interested in history and heritage, each of these churches will have opportunities for enthusiasts to help them develop exhibits and tell their stories. They will need support searching regional archives, liaising with the museum services and - God willing - welcoming future visitors. If you are interested, you can always contact me and I'll put you in touch.

The sun shineth on the righteous...

In this case, on the stewards and trustees, a handful of dignitaries, a crowd of nearly 200 and the local media at The New Room, Bristol, for the grand opening of their new garden and Wesley Day (24 May) Service at The New Room, Bristol.

A drab, grey and pretty uninviting cobbled yard has become a green oasis with box boards around herbs and gently waving birch trees. To quote John Wesley (actually then speaking about his London chapel in City Road), it's 'neat but not fine': it's not ridiculously showy, but totally appropriate to the space and makes a welcoming and attractive approach to the chapel. It's evocative of the chapel's past, but contemporary and flows naturally into the very modern shopping plaza beyond (perhaps unsurprisingly when both were landscaped by the same company).

I arrived early, before the gates were shut to the public for

preparations to begin for the official ceremony, which focused on unveiling new carvings of Wesley's sayings around the foot of the famous statue of him on his horse.

Both gates into the multimillion pound Broadmead shopping centre were open and I witnessed passersby stopping to read the commemorative plaque outside the building - I don't recall either of those things before - and a few people came in, sat on the benches with sandwiches, made phone calls and just enjoyed the sunshine. Already this is a place of refreshment and relaxation, a calm in the storm of shopping frenzy:

I think Mr Wesley would approve.

Being a church tourist

It makes a change to be a 'real' visitor taking a tour around a historic church. Today, after our quarterly business meeting was completed, I and my fellow trustees of the Churches Tourism Association were shown around Dorchester Abbey , where we were meeting, by enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, Sue, and heard about the Abbey's schools work from education officer, Margaret. Sue explained how there has been settlement on the site of the village - and probably worship of some sort here or nearby - for thousands of years.

I'm a huge fan of wall paintings and finding the remains of pre-Reformation paint on statues and carving - Dorchester boasts both, with saints, a shrine and knights in a lofty, light church. There's a museum, an award-winning tea room and a lively events calendar: check out the programme for the incredibly varied, family-friendly Dorchester Festival (28th April - 8th May) with theatre, music, dance, food, poetry, art and crafts.

I was invited to become a trustee of the Churches Tourism Association (CTA) soon after starting work for the Methodist Church since encouraging visitors to our heritage sites and historic chapels is a key part of my role.

The CTA exists to persuade all Christian Churches that church buildings are at the forefront of mission and should receive investment and promotion as a resource to this end. The CTA's objectives are: • To promote among churches and others the need to welcome tourists/visitors; • To educate churches and others about the benefits to individuals and communities which can arise from such a welcome. And the CTA aims: • To encourage the sharing of good practice; • To provide appropriate resources to assist members in their work; • To assist the development of partnerships at national, regional and local level.

The CTA provides lots of case studies and resources on its website to support good practice and hosts an annual development and networking event. Presentations from last year's residential conference are available on the website, and details of this year's one-day covention in the autumn will be posted soon. If you welcome visitors to your church, are seeking to engage with the community and want to use your church buildings more creatively to improve your sustainability or want to intepret your history and architecture for mission, then the CTA is the organisation for you.

A Spring Celebration

Monday 7 March

Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, shone with yellow daffodils and spring sunshine, and was scented with narcissi, for Monday afternoon’s Women’s Network event. The theme was ‘From the Old to the New’, as the Network will become ‘Methodist Women in Britain’ very shortly.

The afternoon's very varied programme comprised of several speakers (including an address from Connexional Women’s Network President 2010/11, Revd Julie Hulme), a Gospel singer, hymns and light-hearted drama (including a sketch imagining the automated voicemail for Heaven: press 1 for praise, press 2 for miracles… etc).

For my 5 minutes, I spoke about the way Methodist Heritage is seeking to make our past speak to our present for outreach and discipleship. In this case, I linked the 21stC interest in well-being and natural therapies back to John Wesley’s attempts to help alleviate human physical suffering as well as meet spiritual needs. His early meeting houses such as the New Room in Bristol were intended to be places for education and dispensing medicine as well as preaching. Wesley was inspired by his Christian beliefs to try to provide poor people with effective and affordable medicines and he published a book of remedies, A Primitive Physic (1747) (available online from Wesley's Chapel!)

Remember this was written in the 18thC.... Besides a large number of cold baths and the use of ‘electrifying’, presumably using the small electrical generating machine that can be viewed today in John Wesley’s House on the Wesley’s Chapel ‘campus’, Mr Wesley’s ideas ranged from using boiled onions and rosewater to laudanum, goose dung and horse warts! My personal favourite ‘cure’ is the application of ‘a live puppy to the belly’ for cholic!

Being in two places at once

Saturday 5 March

‘Great news’ my caller announced, ‘We’ve secured a much better venue for the Great Days Out Show. Unfortunately we have had to change the date though – you’ll still be OK to exhibit, won’t you, if we move from mid February to 5 March?’ Not really, I thought – so today I should have been promoting Methodist Heritage in Manchester and supporting our Sites’ Network in London. One of the challenges of this job is its national reach! Thankfully I can enlist the support of our site managers and volunteer stewards to help out in Manchester. Thank you Ali, Caroll and Margaret.

Last March, we launched the Methodist Heritage Handbook at the Best of Britain & Ireland (BoBI) travel trade exhibition at London Olympia. I have represented my employers on their stands at many trade shows over the years, but it’s a bit different when booking the space and approaching stand-share partners, organising staff rotas, health & safety, special guests, associated talks and commissioning graphics for the stand are all my responsibility. Apparently ‘BoBI’ was the first 'secular' exhibition the Methodist Church had attended to exhibit in 10 years. We gave away hundreds of Handbooks and met lots of group tour buyers especially from America, but also from Europe and Asia.

Our exhibition programme kicks off this year today at the Great Days Out Show at the Museum of Museums at that ‘temple of shopping’ the Trafford Centre, Manchester. I went up to set up the stand yesterday (see below right).

From 10am today, Ali Bodley, Acting Development Manager from The Old Rectory, Epworth (dressed as Susannah Wesley!), her colleague Caroll, and Margaret Veal, Education Officer from Englesea Brook Chapel & Museum, will be meeting and greeting a couple of thousand group visit organisers, from groups such as U3A, social clubs and schools.

We’ll be back at ‘BoBI’ on 16 & 17 March, then at the Group Leisure Travel Trade Show in late September; this year both at the NEC, Birmingham. BoBI attracts more group tour companies from overseas due to active encouragement to attend from event sponsors, VisitBritain.

Meanwhile, down in London, c30 heritage enthusiasts and staff from our historic sites and chapels, from Newcastle to Cornwall, Wales to Winchelsea, gathered at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, to explore how ‘It’s all a matter of interpretation’.

Revd Lord Leslie Griffiths opened and closed the proceedings - you can see him here making his closing remarks. The Sites’ Network is chaired by Revd Dr Stephen Hatcher (standing at the far right), and our speakers were Revd Jennifer Potter and Thea, Heritage Steward, from Wesley’s Chapel; Museum & Heritage Consultant, Emma Chaplin; and Dudley Coates and Lloyd Thomas from Tolpuddle Chapel Development Group. Emma explored what interpretation is and ways of doing it, and encouraged animated discussion about which interpretation has engaged our team, and what has been a turn off. Rubbishing the heritage site up the road is not recommended!

Charterhouse, London

Friday 18 February 2011, Methodist Heritage Practitioners' Forum Spring Meeting

Every 3-4 months I convene a meeting of the salaried managers from the main heritage sites, the Methodist Heritage Practitioners' Forum. This group was one of the first innovations of the Methodist Heritage Committee. This group previously knew of each other, but rarely met or collaborated. Now they get together and email in between: they share successes and challenges and work together on common issues such as improving the shops at their sites and recruiting and developing their vital volunteer teams. At Friday's meeting, they discussed developing educational programmes.

At each meeting, I arrange a guest to provide advice or we visit and tour a Methodist Heritage site. Last September we were able to meet at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester where the 'Connexional archives' are held. We were privileged to see some of our treasures from the Methodist manuscript collection, such as Charles Wesley's hymns and John Wesley's sermons and accounts.

This time - thanks to links between the ministry team at Wesley's Chapel, City Road and the Master - we were able to visit the Charterhouse, London. Today it is home to over 40 retired gentlemen known as 'Brothers', but it started out as a Carthusian monastery and was then a Tudor mansion, school and almshouse, and part became a medical college. Its claim to being Methodist Heritage is that John Wesley was educated at Charterhouse from the age of 10.

Charterhouse is far bigger than its narrow gatehouse suggests, with evidence of all the stages of its history in its buildings. The Master took us on a fascinating tour of the site and then we shared lunch in the dining hall with the Brothers, who were warm and generous in their welcome. Many thanks to all at Charterhouse for their kind hospitality. After lunch, with fish in a rich butter sauce and a delicious apple pie, it's fair to say that the male members of our group were planning how to get themselves into Charterhouse in time for their retirement!

If you would like to discover more about this special corner of London, tours of Charterhouse run on Wednesday afternoons at 2.15pm from April until August and cost £10 per person. Tours are taken by the Brothers and tickets must be pre-booked. In addition, a number of evening (7.30-9.30pm) Musical Tours are offered throughout the year for groups of 25-50, accompanied by performances by the Thomas Sutton Singers and a 10-minute recital on the restored 1842 Walker organ in the Chapel. Various catering options are available. For more information and to book, visit http://www.thecharterhouse.org/tours.html

Progress on 'Greening the Broadmead'

Tuesday 8 February, Strategy Group meeting at the New Room in Bristol

John Wesley's Chapel, Bristol, is the oldest Methodist building in the world. It was built by John Wesley as 'our new room' in 1739, shortly after he started preaching outdoors for the first time. John was invited to speak to the poor of Bristol by his university friend, George Whitefield. As well as being a meeting house for two 'religious societies', the building was also for education and dispensing medical care and a lodging for John and, later, fellow travelling preachers.

Today, the Georgian chapel and lodging rooms are open for visitors Monday to Saturday, and are a venue for worship and cultural events. The upstairs rooms house a museum focusing on early Methodism and the life of 18th century itinerant preachers.

The chapel is surrounded by the multi-million pound Broadmead shopping centre in the heart of Bristol. Already, inside the chapel can be an oasis of calm in the bustling shopping streets, but now an ambitious project is underway to create a relaxing green space outside the chapel.

Hard landscaping is well underway for 'Greening the Broadmead'. The trustees are planning the official openig and dedication of the garden in the evening on 24 May, known by Methodists as 'Wesley Day' - the anniversary of John Wesley's 'conversion' in 1739.

All will be very welcome to celebrate at the chapel: for more details and updates on the garden works visit the New Room website.

Trail-blazing for Cumbria

Friday 21 January 2011

First 'road trip' of 2011. Early start for a meeting in Penrith with the Churches Trust for Cumbria (CTfC) and representatives of the Cumbria District. Fabulous scenery all the way - white frost-rimed countryside tinged pink by a bright, water-colour sunrise.

The list of Methodist heritage places in the previous guide/directory of Methodist heritage that became the content of the FREE Methodist Heritage Handbook 2010 included nothing from Cumbria. CTfC are looking to create some church trails in the region and we are meeting to explore if we will be able to collaborate.

Really pleased because the MH Committee agreed in October to try asking the regions to help them develop the content of the Handbook for future editions. They also supported using the creation of tours as a way to identify and prioritise Methodist heritage sites. This CTfC proposal could be a great pilot of both these approaches - particularly as the District will be starting with a blank canvas with respect to the Handbook.

If someone could only visit one place or see one artefact of significance to the history of Methodism in your region, where would you send them? Why? What's the local story?