Researching the history of chapels
Chapels are places of Christian worship without parochial status. So chapels did not benefit from the system of tithes which supported parish churches for centuries. A chapel could be built and supported by private donors, by a guild, by a charitable, educational or religious body, or by a nonconformist congregation.
Private chapels
In the Middle Ages
chapels could be created in houses,
castles and gatehouses, in royal
and bishop's palaces
and the lodgings of abbots. These were private places of devotion for
powerful men and their households, served by chaplains.
Many a chapel built by a Saxon manorial lord beside his house gave way to a parish church. With a church on the doorstep, a domestic chapel might be considered unnecessary, so we should not expect to find a chapel in every manor house. However the Reformation pressed hard on the consciences of Catholics, leading some Catholic families to create domestic chapels in later centuries, rather than worship in the Anglican parish church. Private chapels continued to be built in or beside new country houses well into the 19th century.
Medieval hospitals almost invariably had a chapel for their residents and staff and some later hospitals continued the tradition. For sources see charity buildings. Similarly many schools and colleges and some monastic granges were given their own chapels.
- Dispensations for private chapels, oratories or portable altars may be found in bishops' registers or the Calendar of Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Wills may refer to the family chapel.
- Family archives may contain building accounts and plans for post-medieval chapels.
- Royal chapels are covered by Howard Colvin, The History of the King's Works.
- Volumes of the Catholic Record Society (listed in Mullins) include registers of various Catholic domestic and other chapels, many functioning before the Act of Toleration.
Chapels within churches and cathedrals
Many medieval chapels were built within churches. Structurally a chapel could simply be an altar placed in a side aisle or transept, but such chapels could be given greater privacy with decorative stone or wooden screens. Alternatively chapels could be added to the main structure. A common pattern within cathedrals was to group chapels in a semicircle around the east end accessible via an ambulatory. Lady chapels (devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary) tended to be the most magnificent.
Medieval chapels were
often built as chantries, where a priest would sing masses for the
souls of the founder and any others chosen by the founder. Chantries
could have a single founder, but the less well-off could join a
religious or trade guild, which arranged funerals and perpetual prayers
for its members. Guilds might adorn and maintain a particular chapel:
see the surveys
of guilds in 1388 and of chantries at the Reformation. Medieval wills might found a
chantry or make a gift to a specific chapel. Bishops' registers
may record grants of indulgences for the adornment or repair of
specific chapels.
Although many chapels were lost at the Reformation, when chantries were dissolved by the Chantries Act of 1547, some new chapels have been dedicated within churches and cathedrals in modern times, in some cases as memorials to war dead.
- Cook, G.H., Mediaeval Chantries and Chantry Chapels (rev. edn. 1963).
- Kreider, A., English Chantries: The road to dissolution (1979).
- Roffey, S., Recording the parish church fabric (IFA conference paper 2005; PDF format) includes advice on ways to approach the physical evidence of chantry chapels, including spatial analysis and lines of sight. This paper is based on his PhD, which looked at 80 chapels in Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire.
- See also the sources for churches or cathedrals, particularly accounts.
Bridge Chapels
Nonconformist Protestant chapels
Studies and gazetteers
- Herefordshire Sites and Monuments Record, Post Medieval Chapels in Herefordshire: gazetteer, history of English Dissenters and essays on chapels in the county.
- Jones, A., Welsh Chapels, 2nd edn (1996).
- The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales has recorded all nonconformist chapels in Wales; photographs and information are available online in a searchable database.
- Smith, I., Tin Tabernacles: Corrugated iron mission halls, churches and chapels of Britain (2004).
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in Central England, RCHME (1986). Covers the historic counties of Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in Eastern England, English Heritage (2001). Covers the historic counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, Essex, Greater London, Hertfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough, Kent, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex.
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in the North of England, RCHME (1994).
- Stell, C., Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in South-West England, RCHME (1991). Covers the historic counties of Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Isles of Scilly, Isle of Wight, Somerset and Wiltshire.
Organisations
- The Chapels Society takes an interest in the architecture and history of Nonconformist places of worship in the UK. It publishes a newsletter.
- The Historic Chapels Trust supports redundant chapels, mainly Nonconformist. Its website gives photographs and history of a selection.
Published primary sources
- The Congregational Year Book for 1855 lists all Independent churches in the religious census of 1851.
- County and city directories from the 19th century give information on nonconformist chapels.
- Denominational handbooks, directories and year books e.g. the annual Baptist Handbook (1861- ).
- Evans, G.E., Vestiges of Protestant Dissent (1897) gives dates of foundation of all Unitarian, Liberal Christian and Presbyterian Churches.
- Myles, W., Chronological History of the People called Methodists (4th edn 1813) lists chapels with dates of erection.
Specialist archives
- Dr Williams's Library, 14 Gordon Square, London. Library of English Protestant Nonconformity. Holds a list of Dissenting congregations in England and Wales, 1715-1729, compiled by John Evans (for which there is a published index), and similar lists compiled in the 1770s by Josiah Thompson.
- The Methodist Archives and Research Collection at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester.
- The Library of the Society of Friends, Friends House, Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ. Particularly useful among the Friends' archives are the monthly meeting minutes from late 1660s onwards, which provide information on meeting houses.
And see Nonconformists.