Tin tabernacles

Tin Tabernacles

There are few left in the English countryside but those that remain have the appearance of an improved army hut or even a farm outbuilding and yet they continue as the hub of religious belief in small village communities where the faithful have worshipped for more than a century. I refer to the temporary iron clad churches known as tin tabernacles and you can see one at Pointon, seven miles north of Bourne.

These buildings were an important if brief and usually overlooked episode in the history of church architecture. The first was built in London in 1855 and they were manufactured and erected until the end of the 19th century and up to the outbreak of the Great War. They are now so rare that there have been calls for them to be protected as listed buildings, particularly as early examples of prefabrication.

The church at Pointon was built during the late 19th century through the efforts of the Rev Edwin Wrenford. He was appointed Vicar of Sempringham in September 1887 and his ecclesiastical parish also included the villages of Pointon and Birthorpe, neither of which had a church. Before he died in 1901, he wrote a report of his work in the area in which he noted: "Upon coming into residence, I was greatly struck with the grave difficulties under which the parishioners laboured in regard to attendance upon Divine Service, the Abbey Church [at Sempringham] being situated in the midst of almost pathless fields, about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest house, and only a Morning Service being possible there on Sundays; the village of Pointon, not having a church, although its population numbered 350 souls, having to be contented with only a school-room service on Sunday evenings; while for the entire area of the fen district of the parishes, four miles in length, there was no provision whatsoever for the spiritual wants of the people."

In November 1888, the vicar started holding services on Sunday afternoons in a cottage at Pointon and the following spring, Captain Edward Smith, a local landowner, offered the vicar a small barn for conversion into a Mission Room and after making suitable alterations at a cost of £54 11s. 3½d., it opened for services in September and became known as the Fen Barn Church. "The step was immediately justified by the increased congregations", wrote Wrenford, "while the liveliest gratitude was expressed by the entirely neglected fen people. Captain Smith had also conveyed their gratitude to me, adding that not only were the people greatly benefited, but (and this testimony is most forcible and important) you have greatly improved the value of my property and that of the other landlords, for we can now get a higher class of men as farmers and ground bailiffs, owing to the existence of a church and its services."

Despite such praise, Wrenford continued to worry about the temporary nature of his mission church at Pointon. Captain Smith died in February 1891 and his heir gave permission for services to continue in the barn "so long as it could be spared". Wrenford became apprehensive and realised that he may eventually lose the use of the property and so he looked around for ways to establish a permanent building and was soon raising funds for such a purpose and by October 1892 he had sufficient finance to begin the project.

The money came from a variety of sources, from old friends in Edinburgh where he often went to stay, from clergymen in surrounding parishes, from landowners, voluntary donations and through grants from the Crown and church building societies, and the new iron building was formally opened in the spring of 1893 and later that year, on Wednesday 4th October, there was an official opening when the Venerable Archdeacon Kaye preached the sermon. The architect for the new church was A C Wood, the diocesan surveyor, and the prefabricated structure was most probably supplied by Boulton and Paul of Norwich. It was built and fitted out at a total cost of £351 15s. 2d., although much of the furniture had come from the old Barn Church.

Wrenford, overjoyed at the completion of his project despite the many pitfalls he had encountered, wrote: "It is with much gratitude to Almighty God that I record the realisation of more than my most sanguine hopes in regard to this Mission, and the entire dispersion of the cloud of misapprehension and opposition to this part of my work; which work has been seen to be not the product simply of my over zeal, as alleged, but the supplying of a grievous want for which no remedy had been attempted in all the previous centuries. And it may well be to remark that this church is the only building of its kind from Heckington in the north to Bourne on the south, a distance of 20 miles; and between Sempringham and Surfleet churches, respectively west and east of this church, and distant from each other 12 miles; and that the entire fen district contains no fewer than 240 square miles! I am glad to record that other similar projects have since been contemplated."

By this time, the iron churches had become known as tin tabernacles because of their improvised nature and metal construction. The word tabernacle comes from the Latin tabernaculum meaning a booth, hut or temporary dwelling, and is generally applied in the scriptures to the portable sanctuary of the Jews which was erected by Moses and is fully described in Exodus. The Feast of Tabernacles is still celebrated, commemorating on one hand the dwelling of the Israelites and on the other hand the ancient custom of living in improvised huts, especially during the grape harvest.

There are many in Wales, hence its reputation as the land of tin tabernacles, and Fred Archer, the country writer from the Cotswolds, recalls in his book Poacher's Pie how a sister of a pretender to the throne of France, who was to become grandmother to the King of Spain, got married in a galvanised tin tabernacle in Evesham.

One of the iron churches, or tin tabernacles as they came to be known, offered for sale by the Norwich engineering firm of Boulton and Paul, as illustrated in their catalogue of 1900 for the price of £340 that included the cost of erection on site.

Most of the tabernacles in the east of England were supplied and constructed by the internationally known and well established Norwich engineering firm of Boulton and Paul and they could be bought and erected on site for under £400. The company's catalogue of 1902 outlined their benefits thus: "Although not so artistic or good looking as wood, iron churches are at the same time quite as serviceable while the cost is less. With an interior lining of felt and match-boarding, they are absolutely free from damp and are warm in winter and cool in summer."

The contemporary claims about the robustness of iron churches was quite true but time has taken its toll and they are slowly disappearing although they have inspired fierce loyalty. Among those to go has been the Holy Trinity Church built at Street in Somerset in 1887, primarily for workers at the nearby Clarke's shoe factory. People wept at the last service on 31st December 1989 despite getting a new church that would not let in the rain or the floor bounce when they walked on it as the previous one had done. "It had done 92 years of marvellous service", said the priest, the Rev Derek Evans. "I served 12 years in it and was very happy. It had 3,000 baptisms and was very much loved."

Others survive, at Button Oak, near Bewdley in Worcestershire, at Rookery in Staffordshire, and at Babingley in Norfolk where the iron church has a thatched roof. Others have been saved from destruction and moved by crane to become pride of place in museums such as those at the Shambles Museum at Newent in Gloucestershire, the Museum of East Anglia Life at Stowmarket in Suffolk, while another from a local mining community has been re-erected at the Blists Hill Museum at Ironbridge in Shropshire where it is still a consecrated church and in regular use for occasional services and harvest festivals. Tin tabernacles will always have their supporters.