Protestant Church

Today I'm looking at this awesome church! Like many urbex spots, it has a tendency to have the history copied and pasted by anyone who does a post about it, and this is one of those wonderful cases where it has a comedic effect. You see, they don't proof read it before they copy and paste, and the source material has some nuggets of religious bias, talking about how the churches enemies thought that it would fail, but how God gave the pastor, George Wise, the strength and guidance he needed to pull it off. Basically it's some religious cheese with some oddly defensive tones, and that's fine when one considers the source material, but when it's copied and pasted under the pretense of an original write-up, it makes the lazy urbexer look like their lips are firmly around George Wise's stumpy protestant cock.

But who was George Wise really? Well, he actually was a stumpy protestant cock. 

Slipping inside this church was easier than I thought it would be. Efforts have been made to at least make it look secure. Of course, ease of access doesn't mean it's not a death trap! This place is falling to pieces!

The chapel itself was the brainchild of the architect Thomas H W Walker, but it's safe to say he had inspiration from another architect, Thomas Shelmerdine. The church had its foundation stone laid by the mayor in 1902, but it wasn't to open until the following year. George Wise was the pastor here, and he was also the leader of the local Protestant Party as of 1903, a party that chugged along until 1974, at which point most of its members joined the conservatives.

 

Check it out! This place is gorgeous!

 

To understand its historical significance, it's important to understand the city in the early 1900s. There was a fuck load of sectarianism back then. That is, the Protestants hated the Catholics and vice versa. It's a conflict that actually makes very little sense to me, at least in how heated it gets. They worship the same God, but have varying methods of worship. The Catholics are all about loving the pope, ritualism, and celibacy (underage boys excluded) whereas the Protestants say fuck the pope, the bible is the one true source, and we should smash someones house if they disagree. They aren't bound by celibacy either, so once again, this time literally, fuck the pope.

Catholic and Protestant conflict was pretty prevalent with the Irish at the time, but the city population here swelled from just 77,600 in 1801 to 805,000 in 1911, due to Irish immigration, and so the sectarianism and violence followed, with some saying it even exceeded Belfast.

And it's really not my place to comment on the Irish conflicts, but I think we can agree that hurting others is wrong, especially when it's over how to correctly worship a being who, according to the bible, is a genocidal sky-despot that hates us all anyway. But hey-ho!

In the 1850s Irish Catholics actually made up about 30% of the cities population. But another thing that the Irish brought over was the Orange Order, a group of Irish Protestants whose marches often led to violence. They were sworn to maintain Protestant ancestry, opposed Irish independence, and were very conservative. They don't accept non-protestants into their numbers, nor do they allow Protestants to marry Catholics. You know, just in case they catch Pope Cooties or something.

 

 

Here we have the pulpit, where George Wise once spoke and addressed his flock, and told them all the wholesome lessons of the bible, that Jesus loves us, that we should love our neighbours, and that we should burn Catholics, or Coggers as they were derogatorily referred to.

 

 

There sure are a lot of musical doohickeys around.

 

 

George Wise arrived in the city in 1888 when he was just 33, and under his influence street violence radically increased. Historians describe him as short, stocky and non-descript, but intelligent, and charismatic. He likely would have done well in whatever career he chose. Because he chose the career of a riot instigator, he typically gets dismissed as a violent hooligan, but this masked his skills as an opportunist and natural leader. 

George Wise launched a ferocious anti-Catholic campaign, riling up the working class Protestants into his personal gang and playing on their fears of a Catholic takeover, even telling his followers that the police and council were in on it. He quickly gained notoriety for frequently being at the heart of any street violence. Some even call him the most accomplished brawler in the cities history. 

 

 He'd lead his followers to places that he considered Catholic territory, marched through them, gave speeches designed to antagonise, disturbed Catholic processions, even gatecrashing Catholic church services, and of course they'd get everyone worked up to the point of full-on street brawls between sects. Sometimes his anti-catholic speeches were a bit much even for other protestants, because of how hate-filled and vulgar he got. The angry crowds either loved him or wanted to batter him, depending on which version of Christianity they thought was best. On many occasions the police had to escort him from riots for his own safety, even though he was often the instigator. And in early 1903 he was arrested. This didn't mean defeat though. A petition for his release was signed by 63,000 people, and he swung his arrest entirely in his favour, telling his followers "I am thankful that the lord has thought me worthy to suffer for the protestant cause." 

He used his arrest to make himself a martyr, basically.

 

And that puts a different spin on this church, named "The Church of the Protestant Martyrs." I had assumed the title was in reference to numerous protestants who had suffered and been killed in messy ways over the centuries, but no. This information makes it rather apparent that he's referring to himself, the pastor. The construction of the church was all one big narcissistic wank over himself, with his entire cult of personality welcome to come and watch.

 

There's a dead rat here.

And a skeletal bird here.

The stained glass windows have miraculously survived the decay. I would have thought these would be smashed even before the church was abandoned.

But as always, humans are rarely black and white. There's always nuance, and George Wise wasn't entirely a massive twat. He was very caring to his fellow protestants. He'd visit children in hospital, and during the first world war, he would write to every single person who had left his service for the war effort. There were around eight hundred, but nevertheless he would personally maintain contact with all of them.

He also taught a men's bible class, which grew to almost 1,700 members by 1909. There was also a women's bible class, because apparently men and women can't read the bible simultaneously, and there was a Sunday School for the kids. George Wise also established the biggest cycling club in the city, and encouraged his followers to go teetotal. So he wasn't all bad. He just wanted you to worship God in the exact same way that he worshiped God.

Not content to only pick fights with Catholics, George Wise also had a bitter rivalry with another Protestant leader, Albert Stones, who lived in the south of the city. Albert had the audacity to nickname George Wise "The Pope of the North," which to Protestants is a bit like calling someone the anti-Christ. 

And of course, the street violence continued. Some of Georges men were arrested for beating up a lone Catholic woman, and more were arrested for breaking into someones house because they believed the home owners were Catholic. It all continued to escalate, and in 1909 George Wise was arrested again.

The church toilets are in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

Behind the pulpit we have this room. I have no idea what it could have been used for, but what I do love is how all of the decay is natural. This isn't vandalism or thuggery. This is just nature taking everything back.

 

There are stairs up to the upper pews of the church, but they have long since collapsed. Only an idiot would attempt to traverse these now.

Whoopsie! Well, I've never needed stairs to get upstairs anyway.

It's a very samey view to what we had before. But check this out!

There's a tree growing on the roof, and its roots are coming down through the roof, down the walls and onto these pews.

It's time to check out the cellar, of course, because the sensible thing to do in a building that's collapsing is to get directly under it.

It's quite spacious down here though. Clearly the underside of the church was as some sort of Protestant community hall. Apparently they had bingo nights down here, as well as Sunday School. On Thursdays the Orange Lodge had band nights.

I'm not sure what a politically right-wing band would look like exactly. Singing songs about closing down social programs and giving tax breaks to businesses? Releasing an album called "Everything I don't like is Woke?"

Due to his failing health, George Wise knew that he was dying and organised his own funeral, which was held here in the church in 1917. With the First World War presumably highlighting just how silly it was to argue over who worships Daddy G correctly, and with George Wise dead, you'd think things would calm the fuck down, but no, the animosity between sects would continue long into the late 20th Century, with Wiser or Wisite, or "George Wise Bastards" being enduring slurs for Protestants as late as the 1960s.

As for this church, the reigns were taken by Henry Longbottom. He was the son of a brush maker, and he'd been invited to the city by George Wise in 1913, but went away for a bit to fight in the war. He returned and saw the church prosper through the 1930s. He still did the outdoor speeches designed to rile people up, referring to Protestantism as an open air plant that thrives on the winds of opposition. But somehow he just didn't have the same energy as his predecessor. The street violence dwindled during the 1930s, and both Coggers and Wisers together actually viewed the old rougher days with some nostalgia.

 

Longbottom still thrived off the tensions, of course. As the voice of militant protestants he joined the city council in 1929 and even enjoyed a stint as the mayor in 1950, and serving as the Grand Master of the Orange Order from 1946 to 1956. He would die in 1962, but fiercely campaigned in opposition to the construction of the cities metropolitan cathedral right up to the end, saying that he'd rather have a germ factory built there instead. He was followed in leading this church by the pastor George Mason.

George Mason is an absolute black hole. I can't find anything on him except that he died in 1981. A sad ending to the saga, really. At the start, a charismatic, arrogant tyrant who incited people to riot, whose name was still repeated with indignation decades after he died, and at the end, a man who died a mere decade or so before the internet became widespread and yet doesn't even appear anywhere beyond being a footnote in this churches history.

The crockery still on the shelves is perhaps the most bizarre feature in the entire building. How has that survived?

 

There's some graffiti on the door over here. It says "Bustards don't wont to live me alone tithead."

Ah, so the chimpanzees have learned to use their front paws to use basic tools. Evolution, even in church.

 

So the church closed in 2004, and being too costly to maintain, it was sold to a developer. That developer, who refuses to be named by the local press, did aim to knock the church down and build student accommodation, but a campaign was launched to save the church, and it became a listed building. This means that now it's illegal to destroy it, and until enough funds are thrown at it to reverse its continuous rotting away, all it's going to do is sit there doing just that.

 

But there are hopes to turn it into some sort of community centre, with a multi-function sports hall for yoga, boxing, stirring up protestant riots, among other things. The council are sympathetic but admit that the plan will cost quite a bit. The developer who owns it, in a surprise twist, admits he's miffed that his own plans were roadblocked given that he'd acquired it specifically for that work, but does say he'd be happy to see the church put back to use. However he also adds that if nothing is achieved then he'll put it back on auction. But he seems pretty reasonable! All too often a listed building is mysteriously set on fire so that developers can go ahead with their plans. This guy, at least, seems to have some integrity. 

 

... if he burns it down tomorrow after I've just said that about him, I'm gonna be really miffed.

But that's all I've got. As far as urbex goes, it's a doddle. It's a gorgeous building with reasonably easy access. It is in a city, which means you'll have more chance of running into people here, whether they're homeless people, bored kids, urbexers, or axe murderers. If you aren't very good at spotting the difference between these things (it can be difficult), then definitely consider bringing someone else along. 

Anyway, my next blog will be a little nightclub, and then I'm heading to another city to do some underground stuff there. It's going to be great.

In the meantime, if you like gambling then a great game to play is "Follow someone on social media and see if the algorithm will actually show their posts to you." You can do this by following my Instagram, my Facebook, my Twitter and my Reddit page. I get swamped with bots on all four platforms, so I'd appreciate some fresh faces that are actually real.

Thanks for reading!