Margaret Dancer & Rose Webber on being there for each other:

Margaret: “We were all here for each other, and every emotion that we felt, whether it was joy, sadness, we comforted each other, didn’t we? We were always there for that.” 

Rose: “I miss it, I miss it. Really do.”

Margaret Dancer talking about the Organ:

“Well sometimes when I was in my late teens, you used to have a bellows sometimes on the organ, and Harry used to pump the bellows. But one particular Sunday, the sermon is finished, and the hymn was announced. And my father-in-law was playing at the time, and he was trying to play the organ, but Harry had fallen asleep! So the bellows weren’t going. So we didn’t have any music for the last hymn, because Harry was up there fast asleep, beside the bellows!” 

Margaret Dancer talking about Pew Rents:

“I think there were sometimes some things in any church that didn’t go down too well. In my childhood days, you had to pay for a seat to sit, and nobody else ever sat in that seat. Which I think was completely wrong, which we stopped as soon as we could. Anybody is welcome to sit anywhere in the church anytime. So you shouldn’t say, ‘no, you can’t sit there, I paid for that seat.”

Margaret Dancer & Rose Webber talking about Sunday School:

Margaret: “I think the biggest turning point for the Sunday school was when they started sport on a Sunday instead of Saturday. Because when I was 6 and I came here first for Sunday school, the whole of the body of this church, this side was full of children.” 

Rose: “Boys one side, girls the other.” 

Margaret: “We always met in the middle before we went to classes, and it was absolutely full of children Yeah.” 

Rose: “From the little ones up to the teenagers.” 

Rose: “Well I tell you, people who’ve come to funerals and weddings here have always said, what a friendly, friendly church. They’ve been accepted.” 

Jenny: “It’s got an atmosphere hasn’t it.”

Rose: “It’s the atmosphere. The times people have said that to me ‘Oh, you’re so friendly here and I said, ‘well, you’re very welcome back.’”

Margaret: “There was always somebody on the door to welcome somebody.”

Rose: “Yes there was.” 

Margaret: “Anybody sitting on their own one of us would go and speak to them for a little while, and put them with someone else, you know, so they weren’t on their own.”

Sharon Bawden talking about her parents’ connection to the chapel:

“Both of my parents’ funerals were here, so that’s very poignant for me. You can never forget sitting there and their coffins being there in front of you. 
They were both connected to the chapel in different times in different ways. My mum, when the Bible Christian chapel closed she joined this congregation and she joined lots of groups and took part in things, and when she was ill with cancer, she always used to say ‘If I come into this building and sit here, I feel at peace, it’s so peaceful in this building.’ I can always remember her saying that to me. So that always sticks in my head.”  

Margaret Dancer, Margaret Harrison & Sharon Bawden on Community Activities, Tea Treats & Christenings:

Sharon: “We had a really good Sunday school then, didn’t we? The 1st Sunday of every month was family service when a lot of the christenings took place. My daughter, Jenna, was christened then the same time as your granddaughter, Margaret - Cathy and Jenna were christened that Sunday, and it would be quite full on those Sundays because it was more of an informal service. I think that people, you know, enjoyed that relaxed atmosphere and children could run around and it wasn’t that you had to be quiet and all that paraphernalia. But there was a lot done for the communities then wasn’t there? We used to have barbecues down the playing field or up the school field.” 

Margaret H: “Tea treats. We always used to go on our tea treats.”

Margaret D: “Oh, tea treats, saffron buns.”

Margaret H: “I hated a saffron bun back then.”

Sharon: “That was a big part of the community but we tried to keep it on, didn’t we? We used to do messy church and different things we tried and tried over the years, but you know with different things, sporting events, and just a change of life, isn’t it? People have to work on Sundays now and everything like that. Everything changed.”