Churches of the British Isles

Brendon Hill Beulah Chapel (Bible Christian) sits inside the western v-corner which is formed by the B3224 and B3190 junction, around one hundred and seventy metres west of Chitcombe Rocks Lane. The chapel was built in 1861 to replace a preaching room for the Brendon iron workers. It was restored and reopened in 1910. At the Methodist union of 1932 it became Brendon Hill Methodist Church. It remains in use into the 2020s, albeit with no electricity.

Sea View House Wesleyan Methodist Meeting was actually held in a stables (possibly a former stables) which now is either hidden from view from the main road or is lost (the buildings shown here are potential candidates). Bible Christians used Beulah Chapel (above) while the Wesleyans used 'a loft over a stable' at Sea View House. The meeting was discontinued when the mine workings closed in the 1880s and today it is very hard to pinpoint the location.

Gupworthy Bible Christian Chapel is lost. It was located on the west side of a minor lane, about three hundred metres to the south of the B3224 junction, and on the northern flank of the old West Somerset mineral railway line from Watchet. Built for the adjacent Gupworthy Old Pit, it became a Wesleyan Methodist chapel in 1914 following union. Closure came in 1971, and this photo (1991) shows it as a barn prior to its conversation into a private residence.

Gupworthy Church (Anglican) was sited about two hundred and fifty metres to the south-west of Gupworthy Bible Christian Chapel (above), in the field on the former chapel's south flank (below the West Somerset mineral railway). Shown on the OS 25-inch map of 1892-1914 as an unlabelled church building (used as a school in the week), it remained in place for the 1974 25-inch OS map, but now as a ruin. Some of its stone and slate ruins were still visible in 1984.

Zion Chapel (Bible Christian), Brompton Regis, is located on the northern side of Haddon View, about eighty metres to the east of the parish churchyard (see links). Built in 1854, likely as one of the earliest Methodist chapels on Exmoor due to local resistance, the slate frontage was added later. It remained active after the war, presumably now as Brompton Regis Methodist Church. Its later circumstances are unclear but some sources suggest that it remains in use.

Photos on this page kindly contributed by Alison Day, G Bendell, Huw Thomas (three), and Keith Guyler / British Methodist Buildings, all via the 'History Files: Churches of the British Isles' Flickr group. Additional information from Annual Report of the Somerset Congregational Union and of the Evangelist Society presented at the One-Hundredth Anniversary (1996), from Early Methodism in West Somerset and the Lorna Doone country, W Symons (1895), from Kelly's Directory of Devon 1875, from Kelly's Directory of Somerset 1906, from Report of the Royal Commission on Children, Young Persons, and Women in Agriculture (Parliamentary Papers, 1868-1869, 4202, xiii, p 454).