Buildings
The first meeting place, after Tunnicliff's own home, was on 23 December 1833, "the wheelwright's smithy" near Five-Ways. This has been identified as in the yard of Heath Cottage, Grainger's Lane.
In September 1834, they bought a piece of ground in the "Quarry Piece", Cradley Heath. The first building was erected in December 1834, "a fine new chapel seated for about 300". It was on the site of most of the present schoolroom. The gallery was added later. This extension is at the right-hand side of the above photograph. Neighbouring St Luke's Church was built in 1847.
The present main building was opened in December 1904. It is a substantial brick building with a spire and ornaments both inside and outside. A two-manual plus pedals pipe organ adorns one side.
The original chapel now serves as the schoolroom and hall. At various times in cold winters, the congregation have returned to the old building.
In the 1987, Sandwell Council made it a Grade II Listed Building, as being a significant landmark.
Read more about this topic: Cradley Heath Baptist Church
Famous quotes containing the word buildings:
“The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,—faint copies of an invisible archetype.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)