The history of Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent's record here centres on Hanley, where a Methodist congregation expelled in 1779 built its own chapel, rebuilt it larger in 1819, and watched it rise as the so-called Cathedral of the Potteries before closing for worship in December 1985 and passing to the Historic Chapels Trust in 2002.
Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, began after a congregation expelled in 1779 for backing preacher Alexander Kilham built their own chapel, rebuilt it larger in 1819, and saw it grow into the so-called Cathedral of the Potteries before closing for worship in December 1985 and passing to the Historic Chapels Trust in 2002.
An expelled congregation built its own chapel in a year
In 1779, the congregation of Hanley Wesleyan Chapel were thrown out of their own chapel. Their offense was backing Alexander Kilham, a preacher who said Methodist ministers held too much power over ordinary members. Kilham's argument split the Methodist church. He was expelled for it and went on to found the Methodist New Connexion, a breakaway movement built on giving power back to the laity.
The Hanley group did not scatter. Led by William Smith, Job Meigh and the brothers George and John Ridgway, they first met in one member's house. Then they converted a coach-house at the corner of Albion Street into a meeting hall. Within a year they had built a proper chapel on the site, seating 600 people.
It was formally opened by William Thom, the New Connexion's first president, with Kilham himself present as secretary. The Hanley Circuit built around this chapel became the strongest in the entire New Connexion by 1812. By then the congregation had already outgrown a chapel expanded once to hold a thousand people.
A rebuilt chapel earned the name Cathedral of the Potteries
By 1819 the first chapel was too small again. The congregation tore it down and built what stands today: a much larger Bethesda Methodist Chapel, Hanley, designed by J. H. Perkins, a local school master with no formal training as an architect. His design sat 2,500 people, built in the Italianate style over two stories.
The building grew again as the congregation grew. In 1859 the Staffordshire architect Robert Scrivener added a colonnade across the front, with a window and cornice above it. In 1887 the vestry was extended and the pews restored. By then the chapel had earned its nickname: the Cathedral of the Potteries, one of the largest Nonconformist chapels anywhere outside London.
Worship ended as the chapel's plaster ceiling was lost
The ornate plaster ceiling could not be saved by patchwork repairs. In 1978, workers took it down and hung acoustic tiles in its place. Further repairs came through a government jobs program, the Manpower Services Commission, but they only slowed the damage. The congregation kept shrinking through these years. None of the plans floated for the building's future came to anything. Worship in the chapel ended for good in December 1985.
Demolition looked like the obvious next step, but the chapel's Grade II* listing blocked it. A private buyer took the building on in 1987, hoping to turn it into a nightclub. That plan was refused too. The building sat unused for over a decade, its condition worsening, until the Bethesda Heritage Trust took charge in 2000. The trust could not raise enough money to reopen it for worship. The Bethesda Methodist Chapel, Hanley passed to the Historic Chapels Trust in 2002. This organization was built specifically to keep buildings like this standing when no congregation is left to fill them.
A nearby cinema was reborn as a theatre, lavishly
The Regent Theatre opened as a cinema in 1929, built for a company that put up "Regent" halls across the country. Its architect, William E. Trent, gave Hanley a stage as well as a screen, and the Lord Mayor cut the ribbon. A Wurlitzer organ went in for the silent-film years. Renamed the Gaumont in 1950, it hosted The Beatles, Cliff Richard and Shirley Bassey through the decades that followed. But by the 1980s, a newer eight-screen Odeon had drawn the crowds away, and the old building closed.
Its interior dome took on water damage. A trust formed to save it, then the city council took the project over as part of a wider redevelopment plan. The stage house came down and was rebuilt from scratch. After a three-year, £23 million restoration, the Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent reopened in 1999 with a performance of Annie. Elizabeth II came to open it in person that October, about a quarter mile from where Bethesda still stood empty.
A rival theatre closed and no trust came for it
Hanley once had another stage that never got a second act. The Theatre Royal drew audiences for decades, a rival house standing close to where the Gaumont later built its own. When the Gaumont opened nearby, the Theatre Royal's crowds went with it. Its own doors closed for good, and no restoration trust or council scheme ever came for it. Where the Regent got £23 million and Bethesda got a preservation charity, the Theatre Royal simply stopped.
The man whose expulsion built a chapel died young
Alexander Kilham never saw the grand chapel his expulsion set in motion. He had already been forced out of the Wesleyan ministry once, for arguing that ordinary members deserved a say equal to their ministers. He kept preaching anyway. In 1797 he founded the Methodist New Connexion outright. He gave the laity a formal vote in church affairs for the first time. He died in 1798, only a year after founding the movement, at thirty-six. The chapel bearing the name Bethesda would not exist for another twenty-one years. The circuit he inspired outgrew three buildings before his ideas found a wall big enough to hold them.
The chapel stands on Albion Street today, restored in stages, waiting for a use its builders never had to imagine.
Free on iPhone · opens this place if you have it