NEW WESLEYAN CHAPEL IN MANCHESTER.- The first of a series of services in connection with the opening of the new Victoria Chapel (Wesleyan), at the corner of Queen’s Road and Cheetham Hill Road, was conducted in the chapel, yesterday afternoon, by the Rev. Luke Wiseman, President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. The new chapel is one of the most important erected by the Wesleyans in the North of England. Messrs. Clegg and Knowles, of Manchester, are the architects, under whose direction the works already executed have been carried out. The chapel only is built at present, but the committee confidently hope that in a short time funds will be forthcoming to enable them to complete their scheme. The entire design comprises a chapel, lecture room, three classrooms, and a chapel-keeper’s house. The chapel is roofed over in one span, without intermediate pillars. Dormer windows have been placed on each side of the roof, and afford ample light and enhance the architectural effect. Equal attention has also been given to the acoustic properties of the building, the form of roof, being the one best adapted to ensure certain success in that respect. The three doorways at the west end open to a spacious vestibule, divided from the chapel by a handsome glazed screen, and communicating only with the tower and north staircase. A space for the organ and choir is placed in a separate recessed gallery, behind the pulpit, divided from the chapel by a lofty arch with granite shafts and moulded stone corbels. A gallery also extends along each side and one end of the chapel. 490 sittings are provided on the ground floor, and 340 in the galleries. Pitch pine, carefully selected and well varnished, has been used for all the fittings. The east and west windows are filled with stained glass. The general contract has been carried out by Mr. Mark Foggett. The chapel is warmed by a hot-air apparatus. The chapel occupies part of a site containing 1,000 square yards of land, which has been taken on a lease for 999 years, and for which a chief rent of a shilling a yard per annum has to be paid. The cost of the chapel and all its fittings is estimated at £5,500, of which about £3,200 has been promised or received in the shape of voluntary contributions, and £1,840 has been obtained by a bazaar and various other means. The new chapel will be used by the congregation formerly worshipping in Ebenezer Chapel, Red Bank, which is to be used in future as mission chapel for working men.
The Manchester Times – Saturday 07 December 1872, page 5.
The partnership of Charles Clegg and John Knowles was a major Manchester architectural practice, which was responsible for the design of many buildings in the city. The second phase of their design was executed in 1877 when the Sunday Schools were built. Whether the final stage of lecture rooms was built, I have yet to discover.
Built to seat 830, at the time of the 1940 Statistical Returns, the chapel could seat 800.
The chapel closed in 1950
Grid Ref: SD844004
Reference: The eighteenth annual report of the Wesleyan Chapel Committee, 1872 frontispiece
Returns of accommodation … 1873. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1875
Statistical returns … as at July 1st 1940. Manchester: Methodist Church, Department of Chapel Affairs, 1947
Architects of Greater Manchester, 1800-1940. Accessed 17 December 2019 https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/
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