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Chapel at Colworth |
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Colworth's
Secret Place of Worship
When my wife and I started our barn conversion at Colworth Farm four years ago, we were intrigued to be told that the small, dilapidated building standing at the entrance to the former farmyard had been a ‘chapel’. What was the story behind it, we wondered? Local research has yielded some of the answers.
The building’s use as a place of worship dates back to the 1880’s, when the population of Colworth was considerably larger than it is today. The following report appeared in the West Sussex Gazette on 6 September 1883:
Opening of a Mission Room at Colworth
Throughout the autumn of last year and the spring of this, the Vicar of Oving (the Revd. Henry Mahony Davey) in which Parish Colworth is situated, has held a service on Sunday evenings in the kitchen of a small farm house, by the kindness of Mr. Charles John Drewitt of Drayton, the tenant of the farm under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
This year Mr. Drewitt has given up a building formerly used as a store house, which has been fitted up in as Ecclesiastical a manner as circumstances permit. This was used for the first time Sunday last, when there was a good congregation, in spite of the inclemency of the weather.
To show the need for such a building, it must be stated that there is a population of 100 at an average distance of two miles from the Parish Church, and nearly that distance from any place of worship. Unfortunately the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who own the great tithes and property in the Parish, amounting to £3000 per year, have declined to do anything for the spiritual welfare of their tenants on the prebendal estate at Colworth.
The modern reader may smile at the fact that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners seem to have been no more popular in the 1880’s than the Church Commissioners are today!
The Mission Room in the 1930’s
Mrs. Kit Manouch (nee Shopland), now resident in Chichester, was a regular attendee of Sunday School in the Mission Room from 1932 to 1939. Born at Groves Farm Cottages, on the opposite side of the Bognor Road, she was actually christened in the Mission Room in 1928.
She recalls that Sunday School was sometimes run by Sister Whiting from the Church Army, and sometimes by two cassocked students from the Theological College in Chichester. Around 20 children would wait at the entrance of the Mission Room on Sunday afternoons for the students to alight from the bus outside the Nelson Arms pub and unlock the building. The entrance was at the western end, now bricked up. The walls inside were plain and unadorned, but there was a harmonium. The children sat on forms and on most occasions the building was fairly full. Attendance was rewarded by stamps, which were saved to earn edible gifts.
After the Second World War
The Mission Room today shows few signs of its former use. The only clue lies in the boarded up windows, where the frames show some remnants of an ecclesiastical design.
When it ceased to be used for religious purposes is not yet clear. Another informant recalls that the building was in use in the early 1960’s as a changing room for footballers playing on Colworth United’s pitch to the north of Colworth Farm.
Does anyone else have any memories of this modest building with its unusual history?
Chris Wood, Orchard Barn,
Colworth
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