It stood in the locality called “Windmill Hill,” now known by the name of Windmill Street, a street that runs parallel with City Road, and abuts on the north-west corner of Finsbury Square. The building was placed on the east side of the street, some sixteen or eighteen yards from Providence Row; and measured about forty yards in front, from north to south, and about thirty-three yards in depth, from east to west. There were two front doors, one leading to the chapel, and the other to the preacher’s house, school, and bandroom. A bell was hung in a plain belfry, and was rung every morning at five o’clock for early service, and every evening at nine for family worship; as well as at sundry other times. The chapel, which would accommodate some fifteen hundred people, was without pews; but, on the ground floor, immediately before the pulpit, were about a dozen seats with back rails, appropriated to female worshippers. Under the front gallery were the free seats for women; and, under the side galleries, the free seats for men. The front gallery was used exclusively by females, and the side galleries by males. “From the beginning,” says Wesley, “the men and women sat apart, as they always did in the primitive church; and none were suffered to call any place their own, but the first comers sat down first. They had no pews; and all the benches for rich and poor were of the same construction.”[317] The bandroom was behind the chapel, on the ground floor, some eighty feet long and twenty feet wide, and accommodated about three hundred persons. Here the classes met; here, in winter, the five o’clock morning service was conducted; and here were held, at two o’clock, on Wednesdays and Fridays, weekly meetings for prayer and intercession. The north end of the room was used for a school, and was fitted up with desks; and at the south end was “The Book Room” for the sale of Wesley’s publications. Over the bandroom were apartments for Wesley, in which his mother died;[318] and, at the end of the chapel was a dwelling house for his domestics and assistant preachers; while attached to the whole was a small building used as a coach-house and stable.[319] Why was the building called the Foundery? Because, for a number of years, it was used by the government in casting cannon. When Wesley bought it, the edifice had been a ruin for about twenty years. In 1716, whilst recasting the injured guns taken from the French in the successful campaigns of Marlborough, a terrible explosion blew off the roof, shook the building, killed several of the workmen, burnt others, and broke the limbs of not a few. This led to an abandonment of the place, and the removal of the royal foundery to Woolwich.[320] The next occupants were Wesley and the Methodists; and the echoes of prayer and praise succeeded the clang of anvils and the roar of furnaces of fire.