Talk:Waterloo church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Article Title

Paul, I'm a little puzzled as to your choice of title for your article. Almost all, without exception, the text books and works I consult refer to these churches as "Commissioner Churches" or "Commissioners' Churches". I accept that "Waterloo church" may have been a popular early 19th century name but it hardly ever used in the 21st century. What is your reason for choosing this as your main title for the article? Can you justify it and what are your sources for preferring it over the more common "Commissioner Churches"?--DonBarton 14:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Waterloo" churches

Is it not pretty clear from the works of Michael Port and others that memorials to the fallen of Waterloo or tokens of the nation's gratitude these churches were not? Lord Liverpool and others in Parliament made no bones about them being built to combat Non-conformity and the problems of rapid urban growth. Non-conformity in the years following the French Revolution, I have read, was feared as a fertile breeding ground of "proletarianised radicalism". There is evidence to suggest that some of the Yorkshire Luddites of 1813 and Pentrich Rebels of 1817 were Methodists [although whether Wesleyean. New Connexion or Primitive is not clear]. I cannot recall the precise references as I write but it would be no trouble to find them if need be.

The four 1818 Act churches built in Sheffield were, and two still are, substantial structures of stone. One which, St Mary's, resisted the best efforts of the Chartists and Hitler to remove it.

Charles Pooter, Sheffield.

Sorry about the strange format of the above. I have not got the hang of doing it properly.--Chaspooter 21:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Charles - I think that is what you intended.

I am inclined to agree with you, hence my comment about the article title. I suspect Waterloo was an excuse for allocating the money and many of the churches were built as much to counter the radical elements of society (be they the nonconformists or the chartists) as to evangelise the poor and unchurched and consequently the name Waterloo Church may have only been used by a certain group of Anglicans but by the end of the 19th century the name Commissioner Church had been almost universally adopted.--DonBarton 23:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Don,

Thank you for sorting the formatting out.--Chaspooter 13:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The 1818 Act was a long time in coming. From reading the Parliamentary Debates of the time it is clear that Spencer Perceval was contemplating such a measure in the weeks before his murder [1810]. The National Schools Act was passed in 1811. I wonder if it was all part of a perhaps unconscious desire by Lord Liverpool and his administration to preserve the world and institutions of their youth in the only way they knew how - see various comments in Waterloo to Peterloo [R.J. White, Waterloo to Peterloo, Peregrine, 1968, p24]. In terms of social teaching the urban poor would be exposed to nothing too radical in an Anglican cnhurch - see Hart in Donajgrodzki [ed],Social Control in 19th Century Britain, [Croom Helm, 1977, p108 - 137].Chaspooter 13:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)