Mapping Methodism – Tregona Wesleyan Methodist Association (probably) Chapel
Categories Mapping Methodism0 Comments
Map: This profile of Tregona Chapel has been compiled by Jo Lewis and Tony Mansell.
Located north-west of St Eval Church. Travel east from Engollan on the road opposite the turn to the Candle Co. (old sign if still there says Tregona Chapel Art Exhibition). Follow the road round a 90-degree bend and the old chapel is on the left.
Methodist chapel built in 1834 – of mud. (https://www.janedarke.co.uk/tregona-chapel/)
1838: Build date. (Listing)
Kresen Kernow show the start date in 1872 as Tregona United Methodist Free Church but this is the date of the first registration document.
As the suggested build date is before the formation of the UMFC, it was probably built as a Wesleyan Methodist Association.
1857: The Wesleyan Methodist Association and the Wesleyan Reform Church amalgamated to become the United Methodist Free Churches.
1857: Probably became a UMFC. Having said that, it appears on the 1867 Wesleyan Register list in the St Columb circuit as an Association Chapel. Perhaps it didn’t actually change denomination until 1872.
1880 OS map: Appears as a United Methodist Chapel. It is clearly old with cob walls and later slate hanging from a roof.
1907: The Methodist New Connexion, Bible Christians and United Methodist Free Churches amalgamated to become the United Methodist Church.
1907: Became Tregona United Methodist Church.
1932: The Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist and the United Methodist Church amalgamated to become the Methodist Church of Great Britain.
1932: Became Tregona Methodist Chapel.
1940: Seating for 100. (Revd David Easton)
1983: Closed. (Revd David Easton)
1985/86: Papers relating to closure and sale.
The chapel is a grade 2 listed building,
It has been renovated and cherished by the community thanks to local support and grants over the years. The field next door was also used to support events. The chapel hosts the main collection of St Eval Archive which includes original documents, artifacts, a herbarium of plants which grow on land and in the sea and ninety paintings of nine natural habitats in St Eval and an extensive collection of books about wildlife, Cornish History, art and world culture. There is now a compost toilet, rainwater gathering tank, a wild meadow, print making facilities, a vegetable patch and a large pond. The chapel hosts local events including art exhibitions, seaweed pressing, pot making and etching events. It is very active in the Community having its own Facebook page.
Further reading:
Heritage Gateway: Small Free Methodist wayside chapel, now used as a store. Excellent example of a vernacular chapel, built of cob on a stone rubble plinth and with later slatehanging (re-used from a very old roof) to two elevations (front and right-hand return) under a dry slate hipped roof. Sash windows and small gabled porch to entrance end with doorway slightly reduced in width. Interior has old (possibly original) panelled pews adapted to altered central aisle. Listed in Stell (b1).https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MCO32677&resourceID=1020
Listing: Former United Methodist Chapel. Opened in 1838. Unplastered cob walls on a slate rubble plinth. Above the plinth on the west front and south side the cob walls are hung with large rag slates. Low-pitched asbestos slate hipped roof with red clay ridge tiles.
Plan: A small rectangular plan, single-cell chapel with its entrance on the shorter
west end and rostrum at the opposite east end.
Exterior: Single storey. Blind west front with a central doorway with a C20 plank door and a small circa late C19 gabled open-fronted shallow red brick porch. The tympanum of the porch gable is faced with a large piece of slate and has shaped barge-boards; inside the porch on the left hand side a simple wooden notice board.
The right-hand south side of the chapel has 2 large circa late C19 sash windows with margin panes and slate cills. The left-hand north side has 2 large original 24-pane sashes, also with slate cills. The east end in blind. Including forecourt walls at the west end, probably later C19, slate rubble with slate rubble saddle-back capping; the forecourt is tapered towards the outer end where there is a gateway with 2 small granite monolithic gate-posts with pyramidal tops; the gate is missing. A nicely cobbled path leads from the gateway to the chapel entrance.
Interior: Simple interior without a gallery. Plain plastered walls and a flat ceiling from which are suspended 6 gas lights. The original box-pews survive and have panelled fronts, shaped ends and leader’s pew in front. The later C19 rostrum at the east end has chamfered balusters. Source: Stell, C. Draft of RCHM Inventory of Non-conformist Chapei.
https://www.facebook.com/Tregona/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03c52xq/p03c53cl
https://kresenkernow.org/SOAP/search/RelatedNameCode.keyword/CRO%7CUK%7C1217/
https://www.janedarke.co.uk/tregona-chapel/
Tregona Chapel is a Methodist Chapel which was built in 1838. It was used by people from all over St Eval but especially Treburrick just across the valley. They walked across the fields from there, or went by cart. It was deconsecrated and sold in 1986. The chapel has been extensively renovated over the last few years. We are grateful for funding from Cornwall Community Foundation, Boardmasters Foundation and FEAST. We now have a compost toilet and water tank to gather rain water for workshops. Andrew has also bought part of the field next to the chapel which we’ll use for events and where we’ll be making a pond. CCF also funded workshops through the summer of 2019. We pressed seaweed, which was the beginning of the new herbarium, an addition to St Eval Archive, which will be labelled with oak gall ink, also made at one of the workshops. In another workshop we made pots out of local clay as made and decorated by Bronze Age residents of the area 4,000 years ago. And we held two etching workshops. This is just the start, future workshops will be announced on the new notice board, online and in the local magazine Dreckly. Along with teas, music events and film shows. The chapels are an essential part of the cultural landscape and street and village scene, they are a testament to those who worked so hard to raise money locally and were built in some cases by miners, farmers and the local community. Chapels served a range of other activities, such as education for children and adults, prayer and Bible classes the performance of music and plays, and the famous tea treats splits jam and cream so well known here in Cornwall. I have visited and recorded many images and stories of our wonderful chapels. Many are kept running by a committed small group of people, sometimes a family or a few individuals. The continued closure of these chapels and the inappropriate conversations are not the fault of the Methodists of Cornwall but instead the planning authorities, the legislators and the Methodist rules and hierarchy that are not listening or prepared to review and respond to to calls for change and for support. Our chapels do not need to all close and the future could be very different. The continued closure is harming communities and is adversely affecting the dedicated communities that hold them so close in their hearts. I am calling for a special conference in Cornwall with interested parties, experts and senior Methodists from their headquarters to come to Cornwall attend to discuss and debate this issue and significant loss of an important asset, they are not a burden and explore other options and alternatives to what many see as a catastrophic failure to seek alternative solutions and not simply manage the decline! We owe it to those who walked before us to create these wonderful buildings and for the future too. Received from Barry West, Cornish Historian.