Victoria Home Page
No institution can ever completely escape its history, even if
it should want to do so. It is always worthwhile to look back
to try to understand where we have come from so that we can make
the necessary course corrections to serve the present age and
to prepare ourselves for the future. Above all, every church community
needs to appraise the ways of the world and work out how to proclaim
a gospel relevant to contemporary society.
Genesis
The first reason for 'Victoria' was that Portland Chapel (a mile away in Kingsdown - whose remaining congregation united with Vic when it closed in 1970) was becoming overcrowded. It had been completed in 1792, a year after John Wesley's death, because the New Room (which he had founded as the first Methodist chapel) was becoming overcrowded! [So Victoria is only two overcrowdings away from Wesley. Could there conceivably be a third?] From Kingsdown in 1860 a number of men came together to plan a new church in Clifton. Among them was Obed Hosegood. He was one of those who must have been in the mind of an anonymous historian of Portland who eventually wrote ".. several of the godly and well-to-do pew holders, staunch supporters of Methodism, and others, exchanged Portland as their place of worship for Victoria".
So the second reason is that a group of men were prepared to contribute very substantially to the costs of acquiring land and paying for the building. In those days all 'subscriptions' were recorded. At one critical point, the promise by Mr Hosegood of an additional £200 tilted the balance in favour of our location. (And we still rejoice to have a Hosegood in the membership)
The third reason was the growth of Clifton. In the 60 years to 1860 the population of Clifton parish had grown nearly five times. Some of this was in the industrial and trading area of Hotwells where Grenville Methodist chapel was established (by gift) in 1839. But the substantial growth was in upper Clifton. In 1861 there were 75% more females than males in Clifton, no doubt because of the number of servants in the big houses. The Church of England had noticed, had built new churches and created new parishes. At the stone-laying of Victoria, the Superintendent minister, Rev. J Rattenbury, spoke of the supineness of Bristol, as compared with other places, in the erection of chapels. Honour was somewhat restored because as well as Victoria, the Portland trustees envisaged a further chapel in Redland. Amazingly, at the second meeting of the Victoria trustees after the opening, the search was initiated for a site for what was to become Trinity Methodist Chapel, opened in 1867. (This church was a mile further up Whiteladies Rd. on the site of what is now Meryl Court). Whiteladies Rd., as a main artery of Bristol, was the place to be. Redland Park (Congregational) was opened in 1862, Tyndale (Baptist) in 1869, nearby St Paul's (built 1854) was reopened after a fire, in 1867 and St John's (Anglican) was enlarged in1864. So the 1860's saw four new non-conformist chapels fronting Whiteladies Rd.
The fourth reason for Victoria was to proclaim the gospel. At
the stonelaying, ".. art and science, politics and public
matters should go hand in hand with religion which would enoble,
elevate, and regulate them all (hear, hear)" ......"..
in the pulpit, pure religion alone would be preached." [One
wonders if the speaker, Mr T Petherick, the senior of the Trustees,
who leapt upon the stone after laying it, to give an address,
was influenced by Darwin's 'Origin of Species' - published just
over two years before - and to Biblical criticism that began in
Germany in the 1830's as a result of historical scholarship].
The archives do not contain a 'mission statement' as it was presumably
self-evident that the future would be a continuation of the past.
It had been a time of growing prosperity for the professional
classes and the 'well-to-do'. Interestingly, the insinuation that
"we don't want these radical Methodists in Clifton"
was met with the assertion that, having served the poor very well,
it was now time to attend to the affluent. There were prayer meetings
and each Leader had a Class which met regularly and whose members
paid their 'class money'. No doubt they engaged in Bible study
and were instructed [no answering back?]. The membership crept
up. By 1875 it was 178. On one Sunday in 1881 there was a newspaper
census of all Bristol's churches and chapels: Victoria had a congregation
of 320 in the morning and 312 in the evening (and had had a prayer
meeting at 8am and a church class meeting at 10am). In fact its
congregations lagged slightly behind those of the other Whiteladies
Rd. chapels, the total non-conformist evening attendance being
1,523. By 1888 Vic had 226 members but by 1914 and 1918 only around
108.
Hardware
The initial purchase of land for the new church secured what in 1860/61 was a prime site at the southern end of Whiteladies Rd. Some years previously, plots had been sold on the western periphery of Tyndall's Park. What was to become the Western Academy of Art was adjacent to a principal gate of the Park. On its other side was the desirable plot. Opposite was the new Victoria Rooms. The only constraint on the use of the plot was that the front of the chapel should not extend beyond the building line of the large villas built and being planned to the north. Some quarrying had been carried out on the site and it was realised that some of the stone for the chapel could come from an enlargement of the quarry. There is an impression that the large hall which lies beneath the worship area was not regarded as a neccesity but as a potentially useful space. So the full width of the site was exploited, allowing for some natural lighting of the hall (below 'street' level) and direct access to from the outside by a fairly steep ramp. The depth of the site was not originally fully used: about 30ft at the rear of the original vestries was exploited rather later. Alongside the vestries, access was provided by precipitous stone steps (which remain to this day) to the lower hall. There is also internal access to the hall by more forgiving steps from the entrance porch to the church.
By 1990's standards the lower regions of the premises remain 'awkward' and without radical alterations could not be readily adapted to support 'community church' activities. The body of the church was substantially altered in the 1960's with the organ and choir loft moved to a position behind and above the congregation. A new pulpit and lectern flank a distinctive square 'island' communion area where communicants gather on all sides of the table, able to receive bread and wine as individuals and also to be readily concious of the wide community.
As soon as the chapel was completed there were complaints about audibility and expedients such as false canvas ceilings were tried. Modern amplification technology has alleviated most of the problems but experience has shown that the church is not well-suited to dramatic presentations in which fast speech is unamplified from individual microphones.
No-one will complain that our 1860's forebears did not foresee
the need for a car park, for a graded Sunday school (let alone
'Junior church') or for drop-in centres serving a very different
type of community than their up-market Clifton world. But it is
salutory to reflect how successive generations can seem oblivious
to the constraints of existing buildings and lack the enterprise
of the founding fathers to make a fresh start. [Some of Victoria's
members have experience of new 1950s and 1960's churches being
pulled down in the 1970's and 1980's by decision of their members
or to make way for shopping plazas - the necessities being exploited
to enable more economic and better societies to prosper] Victoria,
by the say-so of the National Heritage Department, has been listed
as a building with distinctive architecture which is required
to be preserved. For the general public or aesthetes, presumably-
however restricting this may be for christian congregations and
christian service. It is salutory to pose the question, "What
if Victoria were burnt down: what would we do?"
People
If our founding fathers could not foresee the need of a third-millenium church for flexible multi-purpose buildings, it was because, nearly 140 years ago, they could not conceive how Clifton, Britain and the world would change. There was a confidence in the 1860's that the prosperity of a lively imperialist capitalism in Britain would persist. After the first world war that illusion was irretrievably lost. The big houses of Clifton could no longer be maintained with inexpensive servant labour and multi-occupation began. Clifton is now largely populated by flat-dwellers and has a rather high transient population. The University of Bristol - staff and students - is the largest local 'business'. In the 1960's the University Methodist Society had a membership of ~120 and (because Victoria had become the Methodist chaplaincy church) packed congregations were again experienced. By the mid-1990's MethSoc membership had shrunk to ~30. Methodist membership numbers throughout the country have also steadily declined. Victoria would not like to think of itself as a typical average-size Methodist church (is there such?) but it constitutes a barometer of the attractiveness of 'Methodism' to intelligent young people.
Victoria's present congregation is diverse and can offer many diagnoses of the ills of society. It can offer many opinions on how to be the church in tomorrow's world. The elderly use traditional language to affirm their faith - but recognise that this is scarcely intelligible to the young. Many young adults cling to the certainties of biblical teachings derived from key passages and place great emphasis on prayer. At another extreme, many affirm the revelation of God in continuing creation - principally in and through people and through new knowledge. All would agree that the simplest and most profound statement is, "God is love", that we are called to exemplify that love in our everyday lives and to seek to draw others into an experience of that love.
The church (building) is where we share our explorations and individual responses. Weekly public worship has to embrace and reflect the variety of our deeds and our aspirations, and to expose our complacencies. It aims to reflect the realities of the 1990's and our fears and hopes for the next millenium. Participation, new language, the use of symbols, and new music are all brought into the service - of God and community.
Our forebears would recognise Victoria's meetings for bible study - but they might be surprised by the depth and varieties of interpretations as indicated, for example, by ~ 100 metres of shelving in the University Library devoted to commentaries. They would recognise prayer meetings: they might be surprised at how many members of the congregation are not disposed to let God deal with their intercessions by him(her)self! ("Lord, what must I do?"). 'Class Meetings' have been replaced by pastoral visitors acting as and when they think fit. Housegroups might seem revolutionary, their attention to everyday issues quite remarkable and the spirit of unity in diversity rather surprising. Our diagnoses of the state of society and of the needs our neighbours call for cool heads as well as warm hearts. We think together, in many formal and informal settings; not simply about Victoria but about our neighbours.
We take inspiration from each other to lead useful lives in our
various communities. We seek to preserve unity in a very diverse
membership - all evangelical, but qualified by adjectives such
as conservative, liberal, and even radical. The real test is if
we are really addressing the needs of our neighbours and of generations
to come.