Bedlam Wesleyan Methodist chapel

Bedlam Wesleyan Methodist chapel

The Shrewsbury Chronicle of Friday 7 July 1899 contained the following report:

“CHAPEL OPENING. On Sunday last the new iron chapel at Bedlam, Bitterley, was opened for public worship, when sermons were preached, morning and evening, by the Rev. W. O. Robinson, of Ludlow. Collections were taken for the chapel funds.”

The village war memorial, a listed building,  was built within the grounds of the chapel

Location: Titterstone Cottages, Clee Hill, Ludlow, SY8 3PP

SO 5839077361

But there’s a poser: Which is the former chapel?

Is it the tin building immediately behind the war memorial, or is it the larger white building alongside to the right, visible on Janice Cox’s Shropshire’s Non-Conformist chapels website here?

The photo was provided by Maurice Coleman, a local Methodist lay preacher & he said that the photo of the white rendered building was of the former chapel. However, there was doubt about that as the descriptions of the opening of the chapel in local newspapers describe it as an “iron chapel” & even accounting for modernisation the white house in the photo looks much more “upmarket”!

The Bitterley Parish Plan is written by local people with obvious local knowledge and  states that the chapel has been converted into a house – and shows a picture of both the white house and the tin shed.  Does that rule out the tin building just behind the war memorial?

https://www.bitterley.org.uk/images/pdf/parish-plan/bitterley_parish_plan.pdf

Just to add to the confusion, the late 19th century large scale O.S. map has the label for a Methodist chapel on the other side of the road, although that might just be because they didn’t have space for lettering a building on the north side of the road.

Can you help?

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