St Mary Magdalene Chapel
Old records indicate that there was a medieval chapel in Ashbrook dedicated to St Mary Magdalene in the centre of the village. There is no record that the chapel was attached to either the Abbey or the Church in Cirencester, so it may have been a private chapel built by whoever owned Ashbrook Manor during the Norman period.
Primitive Methodist Chapel in Ashbrook
Primitive Methodists were characterised by the relatively plain design of their chapels and low-church worship, compared to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, from which they had split. Its social base was among the poorer members of society. Primitive Methodism had its roots in John Wesley’s open- air preaching, which began in the in the mid 18th century. In 1932 the Primitive Methodist and Wesleyan denominations merged to become the Methodist Church of Great Britain (extract from Wikipedia).
A Scrap Book of Ashbrook Chapel with the Cirencester Circuit by an unnamed author (and with contributions from villagers who once lived in Ampney St Mary and in neighbouring villages) includes the following history.
Primitive Methodists were concerned about what seemed like a landslide by the whole of society into heathendom and savagery. Their ideal was to return to the simple and direct teachings of John Wesley which, in their opinion had by now become ensnared by the hypocracies of ‘the world’. The Primitives set out to remind people that being illiterate and ragged did not weigh against you in the Kingdom of God. They urged that the only way in which a family could hope to survive in those desperate times was by honesty, sobriety and good neighbourliness,
Although the zeal of the early Primitive Connexion, as it called itself, was mocked by the fashionable, and mildly persecuted by authority, it rapidly gained popularity with the working folk of the 1820s. Soon, nearly every village round Cirencester had formed a small Society, holding its meetings in a labourer’s cottage. By the middle of the century the nearest Society to Ashbrook was at Easington and, no doubt Ashbrook families would have taken a walk over the Planks to the meeting there until, in 1866, Ashbrook built its own chapel, and the Easington Society then dissolved.
In those later Victorian years, twenty five of the thirty or so families living in Ashbrook were working in the land – men, women and children. The remaining five families were also dependent upon agriculture for their livelihoods. Nobody had a vote. Because of the absence of a resident squire or parson, both Ashbrook and Hilcot End were fairly solidly ‘Chapel’.
Mainly responsible for building Ashbrook Chapel was Joseph Tilling, who, like his father, had been born in the village: both were farm labourers. In 1870, Joseph moved to Poulton as manager of its quarries and in 1876 he buit the Mission Room there. Another Ashbrook man who became prominent within the whole circuit was Mark Hall who kept the bakery and shop at what is now called ‘Forty House’. Both he and his Sunday School are remembered with affection by Miss Eve Harding.
The chapel itself was built on a freehold site which is now the kitchen of Ashbrook House. It was a single storey building of red brick with a red tiled roof. The only door was at the west end with a religious type of window on either side of it. Two similar windows were at the east end, but there were none on the roadside, nor on the side away from the road. The caretaker always lived in the cottage next door, officially called the ‘Manse’. Inside the chapel there was seating for ninety people, and the harmonium, preaching stand and a wood/coal stove were all at the east end.
The Ashbrook Society was one of a dozen in the villages which formed the ‘Cirencester Circuit’. In Ashbrook, from 1890 until 1910, the attendances registered were between forty and sixty people, for all were welcome. The great day of the year was each society’s Camp Meeting, an outdoor singing and preaching event, usually held in early autumn.
It was in late Victorian and Edwardian times that the Primitive Connexion reached its greatest influence in the villages. After the Great War, however, the murderous horror of which had been enthusiastically supported by Church and Chapel alike. people felt a strongly cynical doubt about organised religion. All the chapel Roll Books showed a continous decline in membership and, with the arrival of the farming slump, the reduced congregations had no money for collections or contributions. It was this lack of money which caused the closure of Ashbrook Chapel in 1935, explains Miss Eva Harding. Also, because of the hard times, all the various methodist offshoots had re-united into one church in 1932.
There was some difficulty in the sale of the building, however, because the intending purchaser, Mr. F. Heaton (knighted in 1943) only wanted to buy it in order to demolish it, an idea which horrified the chapel trustees. A compromise was reached by which the chapel’s walls were left standing but were enclosed in a shell of Cotswold stone, and the roof, raised to include a second floor, was clad in stone tiles. The Ashbrook estate builder Mr Bert Wilkins, brother of Horace of the Red Lion did the work.
Notes
- The Planks were large flat stones laid in a path across the field from Ashbrook to Ampney St Peter (also known as Easington or Eastington) in areas that were frequently wet. Some of these Planks can still be seen.
- Ashbrook House is now a substantial building at the east end of Ashbrook Lane.
Ampney St Mary Village Website 