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Tan Bank - Primitive Methodist Chapel
Revival
The onset of the early Victorian period brought about a revival in the fortunes of Methodism in Wellington, reflecting the important role that religious observance played in the lives of people from all classes during the Nineteenth Century. The Ecclesiastical Census tells us that the chapel had afternoon and evening congregations of 160 and 260 people respectively in 1851, while its Sunday School was also healthily attended, having at that time 50 pupils. The cramped conditions at the chapel eventually led its leaders to look for a new site on which to build a larger place of worship and, in 1888, some land was acquired in Glebe Street (then known as Jarratt's Lane) for this purpose. Eight years later, the opportunity to purchase an adjoining plot on Tan Bank arose and it was here that a new chapel, designed by Elijah Jones of Hanley, was constructed in 1898, at a cost of £2000. After the new facility had opened, the old chapel was used solely as a Sunday school until it too was replaced in 1906, by the building that stands adjacent to the modern day Mosque. It is now occupied by the First Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic.