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This
simple little Congregational chapel sits in the
main village street of this suburb of Woodbridge.
I often cycle past it, but unless you are here
first thing in the morning or last thing in the
afternoon, it is rather difficult to photograph
thanks to the position of the sun. The elegant
inscription outside dates it at 1860, and the
yellow bricks suggest that they came up the Deben
river by boat rather than being fired locally. Nine years
before the chapel was built, Melton Methodists
were recorded in the 1851 Census of Religious
Worship as meeting in a hired room, the lower
part of a separate building used exclusively for
worship. Just 16 of them met in the morning,
and 34 in the afternoon. By comparison,
Charsfield, a village half the size a few miles
off, could boast an attendance of almost 350 in
its Baptist chapel. Methodism was never strong in
this part of Suffolk, and one asumes that the
Methodist contingent here were absorbed into the
1860 chapel, if they were not actually
instrumental in its construction. It looks
strikingly similar to Primitive Methodist chapels
of that date.
I
have actually been inside this chapel - but that
was many years ago, when I managed to do 64
churches on a Suffolk Historic Churches bike
ride. This was one of the last churches before I
collapsed into an exhausted, hyopthermic heap a
few miles north of here in Wickham Market. The
people of Melton chapel were very nice,
responding to my apparent tiredness with a cup of
tea and a biscuit - or perhaps it was the crazed
look in my eye that encouraged them to placate
me. Whatever, while I am afraid that I cannot
recall what this chapel is like inside, I always
remember the people here for their kindness.
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