A Methodist museum is housed in the preachers' rooms above the chapel. The courtyards around the building contain statues of John Wesley[3] and his brother Charles.[4]
History and architecture
On 2 April 1739 John Wesley began preaching in the open fields at Bristol, and founded societies there.[5][6] Under Wesley's direction, the building followed two months later, making it the oldest purpose-built Methodist chapel in the world.[7][8] He called it "our New Room in the Horsefair".[9]
The chapel was built with a double-decker pulpit, which was common at the time, and is lighted by an octagonal lantern window to reduce the amount paid in window tax. In addition to meetings and worship, the New Room was used as a dispensary and schoolroom for the poor people of the area.[10] The pews and benches were made from old ship timber.[11] The Baldwin and Nicholas Street Methodist societies combined to form the United Society, which met at the New Room from 3 June 1739.[12][page needed] Wesley insisted that meetings at the New Room should only be held outside of Anglican church hours as he wanted Methodism to complement rather than compete with Anglican worship.[12]
New Room interior
In 1748 it was extended, possibly by the Quaker architect George Tully in view of the stylistic similarities with the Friends' Meeting House at Quakers Friars of the same period.[13] John Wesley believed that liturgical worship should be carried out in churches, and only reluctantly allowed the enlarged New Room to comply with the Toleration Act 1688, making it a formal place of worship.[12] Rooms were built above the chapel, in which Wesley and other itinerant preachers stayed. Wesley lived at the New Room from 1748 to 1771 and administered Holy Communion there when his brother Charles was away.[12] Wesley added to the Methodist offer in Bristol by selling his published works from a bookstore in the New Room. Analysis of the complete printed output of Bristol between 1695 and 1775 shows that over half was written by Methodists.[12] Wesley published a medical handbook, Primitive Physick; the New Room housed one of Bristol's first medical dispensaries.[14]
A general view of the interior of the chapel, just prior to the service taking place. The New Room was visited by American soldiers on 12 April 1945.
A garden in the Broadmead Courtyard was opened on 24 May 2011 by the Lord Mayor of Bristol. This was followed by the opening of the Horsefair Visitor Centre on 13 July 2017 by the Duke of Gloucester. The new facilities include a café, library and archive and conference and education facilities, plus an expanded interactive museum housed in the twelve upstairs rooms of the 1748 building.[15] As the oldest purpose-built Methodist building in the world it has become a centre of international pilgrimage.[16][17]
^Dolbey, George W. (1964). The Architectural Expression of Methodism: The First Hundred Years. Epworth Press. p. 41.
^ abBest, G. M. (2017). The Cradle of Methodism, 1739-2017: A History of the New Room and of Methodism in Bristol and Kingswood in the Time of John and Charles Wesley and the Subsequent History of the Building. Tangent Books. ISBN978-1-910089-60-6.
^ abcdeMorgan, Kenneth O. (1990). John Wesley and Bristol. Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association. ISBN978-0901388582.
^"Wesley's New Room". Looking at Buildings from the Pevsner Architectural Guides. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2007.
^ abVickers, John A. (ed.). "New Room, Bristol". DMBI: A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
