The New Room
The
New Room, as all good Methodists know, was built in
the centre of Bristol in 1739 and is the first purpose-built meeting hall for
Methodists in the world. It was constructed with money Wesley raised from
donations and the proceeds of his writing.
Today, after the chapel's redecoration, visitors will see for the first time in more than two centuries how the founder of Methodism meant the chapel to look: bathed in white, not the gloomy green they have been accustomed to.
What makes the latest renovation so startling is that the process of paint archaeology— chipping away layers of decoration to find the original colour scheme beneath— has unveiled a room very different from what had previously been assumed.
Instead of the green distemper the walls have been painted
with for most of the last century— a colour that even the architectural
historian Nicholas Pevsner may have assumed to be original— they have been
revealed to have been painted in white and a pastel stone colour by the original
builders. Pevsner's guide to the city's
architecture in the 1950s spoke of green limewash but he seems to have
mistranscibed a reference to its earlier grey walls. It is now apparent that
they weren't even grey, just dirty.
The redecoration has simply transformed the room
, said
Mark Topping, the Grade I listed building's custodian, when speaking to Stephen
Bates (Religious affairs correspondent for TheGuardian).
When asked would John Wesley now recognise the place, he
said He would, but he wouldn't like the pews the Victorians put in. They really
limit the room's versatility, unlike in his day.
