1748—Willenhall.
1755—St. John’s (the new building was injured by fire, and not consecrated till 1760).
From the Registers is gleaned the following issue of a writ to release sequestration of fees:—
Memorandum. March 4, 1748.—The Faculty for Rebuilding and enlarging ye Chapel of Willenhall authorized ye then present Ministr, ye Revd. Titus Neve to charge and receive for Breaking up ye Ground or Building a Vault in ye said Chapel ye sum of two Guineas and also one Guinea for opening ye same at any time afterwards to him and his successors. The Intention of this Siquise was to prevent frequent interments which are a common annoyance to ye Living Votaries for whose use ye Chapel was erected.
From the Diary of Dr. Richard Wilkes is extracted the following illuminative entry—a contemporary record of the state of the ancient edifice:—
May 6, 1748.—This day I set out the foundation of a new church in this town; for the old one being half timber, the sills, pillars, etc., were so decayed that the inhabitants, when they met together, were in great danger of being killed. It appeared to me, that the old church must have been rebuilt, at least the middle aisle of it; and that the first fabrick was greatly ornamented, and must have been the gift of some rich man, or a number of such, the village then being but thin of inhabitants, and, before the iron manufacture was begun here, they could not have been able to erect such a fabrick; but no date, or hint relating to it, was to be found; nor is anything about it come to us by tradition.
Willenhall’s rebuilt church was completed in 1749, and had a formal re-opening on October 30th of that year. An entry in the Registers (which has already been quoted in Chapter XVIII.) seems to intimate that the regular services were not resumed till January 20th, 1750.
This edifice was a fair specimen of the crudities which went to make up the “churchwarden architecture” of the period; consisting
mainly of a plain, box-like nave, pierced on either side by half a dozen staring oblong windows, and having in the whole of its hulk not one curved line or rounded form by which relief could be afforded to the eye at any single point. At one end of this unimposing structure was a flattened scutiform excrescence which served as the chancel; from the others rose the tower, the only feature by which the building could be recognised as a church. The tower, not to put the rest of the church out of countenance, was equally crude; its window piercings being as debased in the Gothic style as was its cornice in quasi-classical; and topped as it was by a low-pitched hipped roof or squat pyramid, from the point of which rose high into the air the famous Willenhall weathercock—the brazen bird flaunting itself aloft, as if deriving its defiance from the aggressive-looking furcated finials which surrounded it at the four angles.