Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
The inside of the chapel is plain, very neat, and quite genteel. We
have seen no Congregational place of worship in this part equal to
it in ease and elegance of design. It is amphi-theatrical, is
galleried three quarters round, and derives the bulk of its beauty--
not from ornament, not from rich artistic hues, nor rare mouldings,
nor exquisite carvings, but from its quiet harmony of arrangement,
its simple gracefulness of form, its close adherence in outline and
detail to the laws of symmetry and proportion. The circular style
prevails most in it, and how to make everything round or half-round
seems to have been the supreme job of the designer. The gallery
above, the seats below, the platform, the pulpit on which it stands,
the chairs behind, the orchestra and its canopy, the window-heads,
the surmountings of the entrance screen, the gas pendants, and
scores of other things, have all a strong fondness for circularity;
and the same predilection is manifested outside; the large lamps
there being quite round and fixed upon circular columns. The pews in
the chapel are very strong, have receding backs, and make sitting in
them rather a pleasing, easy, contented affair. The highest price
for a single seat is 3s. 6d. per quarter; the lowest 1s. There are a
few free sittings in the place, and although they may seem a long
way back--being at the rear of the gallery--their position is not to
be despised. They are not so far distant as to render hearing
difficult; and they obviate that unseemly publicity which is given
to poor people in some places of worship. How to give the poorest
and hungriest folk a very good seat in a very prominent place--how
to herd them together and piously pen them up in some particular
place where everybody can see them--appears to be an object in many
religious edifices. But that is a piece of benevolent shabbiness
which must come to grief some day. In the meantime, and until the
period arrives when honest poverty will be considered no crime, and
when a seat next to a poor man will be thought nothing vulgar, or
contaminating, whilst worshipping before Him who cares for souls not
lucre, hearts not wealth, let the poor be put in some place where
they can hear fairly without being unduly exhibited. The chapel we
are noticing has a spacious appearance within, and has none of that
depressing dulness which makes some people very sad long before they
have been ministerially operated upon. From side windows there comes
a good light; and from the roof, which has a central transparency,
additional clearness is obtained. The light from the ceiling would
be improved if the glass it were kept a little cleaner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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