The Chapel for the Deaf

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location.  I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.  

 

 

Todays location owes its existence to a man named George Healey, an awesome bloke who made the most out of some awful misfortune. When he was only three months old, George was dropped by a nurse, resulting in "accute inflamation of the brain" that left him deaf. This was in the 1840s so the support for such a disability wasn't what it is today. Luckily George was born into a wealthy family so he still had opportunities that some of the lower class families lacked.

 

He was educated by H B Bingham, a man who believed in adapting lessons to suit the learner, rather than expecting learners to conform to a mandatory, rigid structure in which they either sank or swam. This, in my opinion, makes Bingham an absolute top bloke! It's a problem with the education system even to this day, where millions have never reached their full potential purely because the education system refuses to acknowledge that people learn in different ways. But that's a rant for another day.

George came to adulthood in a time when the rights of deaf and mute people were under threat. There were talks in the mid-to-late 1800s to abolish sign language entirely, on a global scale, purely because teachers believed that relying on sign language was preventing deaf and mute people from learning how to lip read and developing their own oral skills. Interestingly, but not surprisingly because this is humans we're talking about, no deaf people were consulted during these talks. Nobody was interested in asking them what methods they preferred and what they found easiest. Nobody looks at these situations and thinks "How can we support this individual to reach their potential?" Instead they think "This person isn't like me. Get the belt." It's a very rigid mindset of "our way or no way" and it made the deaf communities very protective of their educational rights. 

It was a trip to London in 1862 that inspired George to eventually have this place built. At that point he was nineteen and building coaches for a living. But in London he saw a service held by the Rev Charles Rhind, a deaf preacher, and he was inspired to make religion accessible to deaf people in his own city too.

 

His goal of finding a communual hub where the deaf could congregate led George to founding his local Adult Deaf and Dumb Benevolent Society in 1864. Despite forming in 1864, they actually had no place where they could regularly meet until 1869, when they were finally able to rent a room. In 1874 they upgraded from renting a room to renting a disused chapel, but this wasn't suitable, and a more permanent location was sought. 

 

This time George wanted to gather funds to have something purpose-built to meet their needs. In 1877 a building fund was launched, and it made quite the splash at the time. The head reporter of a local newspaper had a deaf son, which no doubt contributed to gaining media attention for their cause. This deaf boy, James Wilson MacKenzie, was also a pretty talented artist, and the sales of his work also added to the fundraising. Much of his stuff can actually still be found in galleries to this day. George Healey provided money inherited from his own parents, while other members of the deaf community found other ways to draw funds. The Mayor completely backed it, and even Queen Victoria decided to throw a whopping five pounds into the mix. Thanks Vicky!

To her credit, this was 1887. £5 was the equivalent of almost £600 by todays standards, at least according to a calculator I found online. So the gesture was actually more generous than it seems.

 

Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Louise, officially opened the chapel in 1887, and it was a move celebrated by the deaf community. Religion aside, far more important than God was the fact that a whole community of marginalised people finally had a place to go, where they could be with people who understood them, and spoke their language. In addition to that, it was a place where some attempts were made to fight for their rights in education and employment. And in a world where their own preferred means of communication was frowned upon, any sense of community was pretty damn important.

From the main entrance, the building does have a very churchy feel to it. However this place was a little different. Just to the right of the entrance was an ominous stairway protected by this big metal gate.

 

 

The chapel, it seems, is upstairs. That's a little unusual, but it's purely because the downstairs was more of a community centre. For the sake of completion I'll definitely be showing that area too, but first, the chapel area is by far the best part of this building.

 

Being at the top of the building, the chapel has the unusual characteristic of being circular and domed. I've never come across a chapel like this before.

The pews are long gone, replaced by the excrement of pigeons, all of which fled through a hole in the roof upon my arrival. 

This place sure is gorgeous though, even wth the pigeon shit.

In the 1800s, deaf churches were largely non-denominational. I think that means it doesn't fit into the various sub-categories churches have, like Calvinism, Anabaptism, Catholicism, Orthodox, and all those various ways that christianity has splintered itself out of some strange desire to maintain an us-and-them outlook despite worshiping the exact same God. At least, that's what I think a denomination is. I'm no expert.

 

By the standards of the time, being non-denominational was pretty counter-cultural and non-conformist. It was more about bringing God into the lives of deaf people, rather than helping deaf people integrate into the mainstream churches. In that sense they were perhaps more comparable to the black churches of retro-America that undermined the white rhetoric of slavery by arguing that God loved everyone. 

Although if you ask me, there's very little evidence in the bible that God loves anyone at all. Read that book sometime, and imagine that instead of God saying the things God says, it's the guy that's dating your daughter. The guys a lunatic!

In keeping with the classic Christian antics of talking about loving your fellow human while doing the exact opposite, a lot of mainstream preachers hated the fact that deaf men were preaching the gospel to deaf churchgoers. They argued that anything God made must be perfect, and that the disabled embodied the imperfections of a sinful world. They said that it would insult Gods handiwork if someone who deviates from it were to be presented before him. It's a pretty disgusting way of thinking, lets be honest. 

The bible does back it up, but then the bible also talks about smashing babies heads against rocks so that's no surprise. On the subject of deaf preachers, the book of Leviticus states that no priest with an impairment should serve at the altar. It's a bit vague though, and some have argued in the past that a priest afflicted with age-related impairments should also follow the rule, to which the retort is commonly that in their case, the bible passage refers to impairments of the soul, not the body.

See, that's the beautiful thing about the bible- you can twist it to suit whatever you want.

Naturally George Healey fought against these archaic ideals, and argued that blind and deaf aspirants to priesthood were every bit as competent spiritually and intellectually as their able-bodied counterparts. Many bishops and priests actually agreed with him, but were unwilling to speak out openly and go against the grain of conformist religion.

There's a cute little room off to the side of the church area, with this old fireplace. I have no idea what this would have been used for.

Of the many attendees of this place, one of the more notable was George MacKenzie, the younger brother of the artist, James Wilson MacKenzie. George is of historic significance as the first deaf person to obtain a degree from a British university, graduating from Cambridge in 1910, after being declined at both Liverpool and Oxford due to his condition. The achievement is acvtually incredible when considering his circumstances.

As a child he was initially sent to live with his uncle in Perthshire, where it was hoped the climate might aid his development. It didn't. His uncle apparently let him run wild, and as such when his parents next saw him the difference was so noticable that they decided that the uncles house was perhaps not the best place for him.

He ended up attending a mainstream school, where he was mocked by the other students, and mostly ignored by his teachers. In light of that, his academic achievements are quite impressive.

There's another deaf chap, Robert Armour, who worked closely with George Healey in establishing the British Deaf and Dumb Association alongside a few others. Like George, Robert wasn't born deaf. Instead he was afflicted by what the doctors called "some malady of the brain" when he was eighteen months old. As of 1861 he worked in the construction of stained glass windows, but he would go on to preach here.

I do wonder, given the fact that he made stained glass windows for a living, if he made the ones for this place, given that it was funded by the deaf community.

 

George Healey died of a stroke in 1927, but this building was his legacy. It would not exist without him, and it went on to serve the deaf community for over fifty years after his death.

 

Check out this gorgeous thing. I pushed some of the keys, and no sound came out, but that doesn't mean a little TLC couldn't bring it back into working order.

 

At the front of the chapel is this notice, making mention of the superintendent of the society from 1914 to 1944, Ernest Aycliffe.

 

Unlike those who had served the deaf community before him, I couldn't actually find much on Ernest at all, but what I did find was that he collected articles that documented deaf history. One notable example was a letter printed in the Daily Mail in 1929 that called for the sterilisation of deaf people so that they couldn't reproduce. Such a thing, even by the Daily Mails standards, would drop jaws if printed today, so it does highlight the mentality of society at the time. But lets be honest, if I had named literally any other mainstream newspaper, you'd be surprised that it wasn't the Daily Mail.

Curiously the letter mentioned the cost of educating a deaf child as an "additional" reason to sterilise them, but no prior reason was given, other than the fact that they're deaf. 

 

Discrimination against someone for a sensory impairment is a whole new level of idiocy, but it persisted long into the 20th Century anyway. Publications from the 1960s described sign language as abnormal, unnatural, and also said that deaf people had unpleasing physical characteristics. 

But the thing about progress is, change is inevitable and moaning gets you nowhere. In 1929 people were writing in to the Daily Mail complaining that deaf people still had working reproductive organs, and articles from the 1960s talk about people signing angry petitions because pubs were letting women in. Now, in the 21st Century, these sort of complaints are absurd, but they prove a point that progress is inevitable. It's just so slow sometimes that we don't appreciate it until we look back and see how far we've come. Anyone moaning about progressive change is really just dooming themselves to a life of misery.

In regards to the deaf community, things have gotten better. Sign language was re-introduced into education in the 1970s, and likewise, the word "dumb" felt out of use too. Sign language finally became recognised as an official language in 2003, which is a huge deal. Why shouldn't we be trying to remove barriers of communication? It just seems like the logical and sensible course of action. In the modern era, it's not just the deaf who benefit from signs, but people with disabilities such as autism too. And it's great. The ability to communicate is so vital to a persons dignity that to purposefully deprive them of it is lunacy.

Downstairs, directly beneath the church portion of the building is this hallway with a stage area, no doubt used for meetings, performances and social gatherings beyond religious use.

Downstairs, the buildings poor condition becomes apparent. There are leaks, consequential water damage, and the floors and ceiling are starting to collapse.

 

Leading off from the stage was this rather precarious stairway. The stairs lead upwards to the chapels fire exit too, and downward to the newer extensions of the building. I trust them to hold my weight about as much as I trust Kate McCann to babysit.

When I describe the extensions as "newer" I do mean relatively. They were added to the building in 1931, providing more facilities for the deaf community, including rooms for snooker, chess, cards and other activities. There was also a womans section, because these were still the times of gender segregated recreational activities, but the place had evolved beyond its religious origins. Sure, church was still held on sundays, but the building became more than just that. It became a lifeline for people.

 

It was also down here that I came across homeless people. Now I've never come across homeless people in abandoned buildings before, as shocking as that sounds, but I'd heard that some did live here, so I was prepared, thinking that I'd just explain what I was doing, apologise for disturbing them, and politely avoid them. People told me not to come here, because the hobo's would stab me. However... and this was terribly awkward... I only saw one melee weapon doing any stabbing that day, and it was a pork sword. The homeless people were shagging, and I walked right in on them.

See, people don't give this enough thought! Of course I wasn't going to get stabbed. You think homeless people want my body rotting away in their love nest? Have you ever smelled a dead body? It's the most unerotic thing ever! There are more fun ways to make your partner gag, as I'm sure the homeless people know.

 

Probably didn't help that I had a camera. But no, I didn't get any pictures. This isn't that kind of website. You won't find any hobo-erotica here. That can stay etched into my memory and mine alone. ...hooray...

Now on to the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets!

 

They're still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

This part is pretty obviously being lived in, and it's easy to see why! The food is growing on the walls! 

 

The deaf community stopped using this building in 1986 but that wasn't the end for it. 

The cities local Igbo People were left without a venue following a compulsory purchase order, and with this place going vacant, they snapped it up, rebranding it as an Igbo Community Centre.

 

Prior to writing this blog, I'd never heard of the Igbo people. They come from, according to the internet, Igboland. But this land fell under Nigeria following British colonisation. Nigeria was essentially "created" in 1914 by the English colonists to bring the eastern and western regions under the control of the more autocratic North. Needless to say, the Igbo have had a bit of a rough time with that, and they resisted colonisation for a long time. There's an interesting story from 1803, when a bunch of them were captured, chained up, and shipped off to America for slavery, only for them to break out, drive their captors into the sea, and then bring the ship into Georgia themselves, where they then denied the Americans final victory by committing mass suicide. 

But now, some two hundred or so years later, history has instilled in the Igbo people a strong desire to protect their culture and identity.

This room is a little flooded but someone has left planks of wood down, to allow entry into the back room.

 

Check it out! A piano!

This back room is full of interesting stuff, like toys and a piano. All of this was probably used by the Igbo community before they left.

Nigeria gained its independance from Britain in 1960. But those in power, mainly northeners who were given positions of power in the British colonial system, mostly opposed independence, fearing that their lofty positions would be taken from them. They allegedly agreed to independence only if they could retain their colonial-era political structure. The west and east agreed, because they wanted independence at any cost. But the northeners, holding on to their power, were generally suspicious of the Igbo, because they had a very entrepreneurial attitude, having a firm belief in building oneself up to wealth through hard work and effort rather than merely inheriting it. One Nigerian leader said to a British interviewer in 1964 that if you stuck an Igbo in a labour camp, within a year they would be the head labourer. It wasn't meant as a compliment. This was seen as a threat to the status quo.

I love this stairway. Nature is really creeping in here.

The upstairs is mainly just offices. This one is labeled "Enquiries."

Following the decolonisation of Nigeria, there were many rigged elections and shady deals going on, just to keep the northerners in power, and eventually, to cut a long story short, there was a coup organised by Igbo, which saw many political figures assassinated. The coup was stopped by another Igbo, but this was seen to be part of the same plot, to make him look good and help elevate him to a position of power, so he was assassinated too. There was a lot of civil unrest and violence against Igbo people, finally resulting in a meeting in 1967 to de-escalate the situation, and also take into consideration the Igbo peoples desire for equal opportunities and greater political autonomy. Ultimately, this meeting didn't bring about the desired results, and Eastern Nigeria just decided to cut its ties altogether and become its own entity called The Republic of Biafra. 

 

This seemed like a great idea at first, with celebrations in the streets and everything. But Nigeria behaved like a bitter ex lover, and declared war on Biafra. Biafra proved to be pretty resilient, but ultimately Nigeria organised a total blockade, cutting Biafra off from the world, and effectively starving to death roughly two million citizens, three quarters of which were children. In fact, some would argue that the entire trope of the starving African child first popped up in Western media during this conflict.

It looks like someone has been living up here too.

 

There was a bit of a global call to help Biafra. Someone in America set themselves on fire in protest and subsequentially died... a passionate but daft move, really. Many called for political intervention to end the conflict... and ultimately the support went to the wrong side, supplying Nigeria with enough firepower to overwhelm the Biafran resistance and bring it back under Nigerian control. The Biafrans surrendered in 1970.

 

To add further complications, Nigerian currency had changed during the war, so none of the former Biafrans had any money in the aftermath. There didn't seem to be any attempt at establishing a conversion rate between the obsolete currency and the new one either. No matter how rich or how poor they had been under the old currency, they were all given twenty new Nigerian pounds to start them off, and that was that. Many wealthy Igbo business owners lost everything.

It's a really sad history, really. Perhaps it only makes a place like this building that much more important. In its glory days as an Igbo community centre, it was a very happy place, vital to their community, providing a place where they could come together, mingle, dance to Igbo music, eat Igbo food, and just be happy. It's great that they had somewhere to go. It's also quite fitting that the building continued to serve another marginalised community after the deaf had moved out.

There's another toilet upstairs, and it is gloriously disgusting.

There's a plant growing out of a pipe, which is pretty cool.

And then there's a spiral staircase leading back down to the ground level.

Lastly, there's this assembly hall with a podium, which I assume was some sort of meeting room.

Alas, the buildings time with the Igbo came to an end in 2007, due to the building becoming damaged and the rising costs of repairing it. The Igbo community in this city is led by a chap called Chief Angus Chukwuemeka, who came here in the 1970s to study engineering. The dereliction of the community centre is of great importance to him. He wants to have it saved, repaired and reopened, for it to be decorated with Igbo decor, have a cafe serving Igbo food, and a social club.

Now at the moment this seems like a very distant dream, but there is a slim thread of hope for the place at least.

 

The thing is, everyone should be able to feel as though there is somewhere where they belong. 

Finally, we have the toilets at the back of this assembly hall. They sort of remind me of the toilets at my local bus station, but cleaner.

Anyway, that's all I have for this building. While it's pretty wrecked, it's undeniable that with the right funding and work, it could be a fantastic venue. More than just a pretty building, it has been a home from home for minority communities for over a hundred years. Ideally it would be great if this place could be revitalised and made into something positive once again.

 

For urbexers, it's good for beginners who are looking for something that has a little more to offer than the casual abandoned cottage that we all start out with. Just don't come alone. People do squatt here and I'm fully aware that I have a level of safety that comes with being six foot three and looking like a serial killer. Also keep in mind that the floor is fucked in parts, so tread carefully.

My next two blogs will be chapels, so short blogs, albeit pretty ones. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, and its less popular but superior algorithmed clone, Vero, and my other social media at Reddit, Twitter, and the Hellscape that is Facebook. I'm definitely shadowbanned on Facebook so if you comment on and/or share something there, it might help the other people who follow the page actually see it on their feeds. That's if you want. If I told people what to do, I'd be a hypocrite, because I never, ever do what I'm told to do.

Anyway, that's all I got!

Thanks for reading!

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