Inkpen Wesleyan Methodist chapel

Thanks to Murray Archer for contributing the picture of the former Methodist chapel in Inkpen, Berkshire.

It stands on Post Office Road (RG17 9PU) and is marked on the 1899 Ordnance Survey map with the Sunday school to the rear of the chapel building..  In 2022 it is in residential use.

Mr Archer reports that “the Methodist chapel is 150 years old this year.   It is the third;

• the first was by the Swan Inn on Craven road on first OS map, now no sign;
• a second was supposed to be at FoxHill, but no evidence;
• this one built in 1872, on Edwards Family land, this family was very big in Inkpen, and big in the Methodist Church,  they owned the large sawmill at the other end of Post Office Road until the 1960’s. It’s now houses and a small industrial unit.

The Burial Ground is partially fenced off from the old Chapel; when the house owners bought the Old Chapel they didn’t include the Burial Ground, but at a later time they wanted to purchase an unused strip as a driveway, and got the whole thing.   They mow strips between the rows of stones, so it is a bit overgrown with thin grass, but easy to access. 

There is a transcript and plan on the Inkpen village history website at http://history.inkpenvillage.co.uk, where there is a graves box for http://history.inkpenvillage.co.uk/graves.html, at the bottom:  you get transcripts with notes on stone locations on the plan, done a long while ago by a lady with the local history group.  There are 2 plans;  one which apparently came with the building seems to have cross references to original records, and the other (duplicate) with only the plot locations.   Don’t know anything about original records.

There are two Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones; one is for my first cousin twice removed, Herbert James Archer, who died of his wounds on Armistice Day, 1918. The other is a WW2 grave for 916325 Corporal A. Carter, R.A.F.; the Commonwealth WGC people come round about every 2 years and clean off and spray the stones.”

The 1940 Register of Methodist buildings confirms the chapel in Inkpen as formerly a Wesleyan chapel.  It accommodated 150, seated in pews rather than on forms. There was one other room in addition to the worship area.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission page for the burial ground is here: https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2000569/inkpen-methodist-burial-ground/