HEY-DAY OF A CHAPEL BY THE NORTH SEA

Beside the busy North Norfolk coast road at Salthouse, where motorists stop to watch the ornamental ducks and geese in the creek, there stood a little methodist chapel looking out over the far-famed marshes to the North sea.
Few folk now recognise it because it has been converted into a dwelling. Yet the chapel, with four pointed side windows, tells of its former purpose. Built of flint, brick and tile in 1891 by the United Methodists, it seated 150 and had a splendid hey-day.

The Primitive Methodists had been in Norfolk since 1927, but the new chapel attracted large congregations and had a Sunday School of 70 scholars. In recent years the numbers so declined that the chapel was closed, sold and turned into a house. But memories of its importance as a focal point of village life remain.

When the chapel was built, a line of foundation stones, laid by well-known Methodist worthies, was placed on the north side, and a Sunday school teacher gave a shilling to each scholar to buy a brick for the building.

Six years after the chapel was built a disastrous flood ravaged the coast. Surging waters broke into the building, sweeping the forms and chairs to one end and ruining the hormonium and all books. When the water receded a major renovation was necessary. In 1953, the sea again breached the bank and created havok in the exposed village. On that wild Saturday night, many people were marooned in their bedrooms, one person was drowned; seaweed was left hanging from telegraph wires and the chapel deeply flooded. The organ was ruined and the building closed for many weeks.

REPUTATION

When the chapel was built, a line of foundation stones, laid by well-known Methodist wothies, was placed on the north side and a Sunday school teacher gave a shilling to each scholar to buy a brick for the building. One aged native can point to where her brick was placed. The site was given by Mrs Sarah Johnson of Manor Farm and James High and his sister (later Mrs. Randall) started the Sunday school. There was no organ— the preacher read out the hymns two lines at a time, and James High started the tune.

 

Hannah High (left) and her brother James, who started the Chapel Sunday school together.

Hannah later married John Randall