Waltham Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was opened on 30 June in 1842/3. The total cost of the project was £300. By 1860 the original building and subsequent extensions and alterations had cost £850.
When built the chapel measured 37½ feet by 22 feet and accommodated 250 hearers. By 1851 this had been reduced to 88 free and 104 other sittings, 192 in all. Subsequently the number drifted downwards until there were only 117 (all free) in 1931.
In 1941 the chapel, which was reported to measure 32 feet by 25 feet, had seating for 110 persons in pews. There was also a schoolroom (24 feet by 11 feet) but no other rooms.
The chapel was situated on the west side of the A607, north of the village (grid ref SK802252)
Sources
The National Archives,1851 ecclesiastical census HO129/418/4/10
John Rylands Library University of Manchester, Methodist Conference Archive Register of applications to build Nos 1804-2166, 7 Dec. 1842 – 9 July 1846 No 1855, 12 April 1843
Whites Directory for Leicestershire, 1868, p 385
Leicestershire Record Office, N/M/NDD 1-15, Annual trust returns, Nottingham and Derby District 1860-1878
OS 25 inch Leicestershire 13.11, 1884-5
Comments about this page
I have added two photographs of this chapel which appears to have closed in 2000, when the baptismal register was deposited.
C.F. Stell in ‘An inventory of noncomformist chapels and meeting-houses in Central England (HMSO, 1986) notes the similarities beteen this chapel and those at Rearsby and Scalford (also described and illustrated on this site, and within a few miles of each other) and wonders whether they shared a builder.
Keith Guyler photographed Waltham as an active chapel in 1997 https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishmethodistbuildings/29946423127/in/album-72157701467320564/
Add a comment about this page