Oldbury Tabernacle Methodist New Connexion chapel

Sainsbury’s Supermarket in Oldbury is on the site of the Tabernacle Methodist New Connexion chapel.  The large chapel was located in Tabernacle Street, set back from the road with a smaller, separate Sunday school building behind it.  Tabernacle Street was one of several streets radiating from the War Memorial.  Of them, only Freeth Street still exists.

The chapel is included in the 1867 Registration of places of worship and appears on the 1882 Ordnance Survey map – as does the smaller Ebenezer chapel on Hunt Street (also no longer in existence), opened by the Wesleyan Reform connexion    Both chapels are on the 1938 map, even though many Wesleyan Reform Methodist societies joined with the Methodist New Connexion to form the United Methodist church in 1907.

Tabernacle chapel is included in the Inventory of Methodist Buildings compiled after Methodist Union in 1932 and published in 1940. It was a very large building, seating 710 people on pews. In addition to the main hall and the Sunday school there were 7 other rooms. In 1940 it was in the Oldbury circuit.