1. East Budleigh’s Salem Chapel: a place for Peace (2022)

 

   

The Lady Chapel in St Andrew’s Church, Colaton

A number of churches in Britain now have Peace Chapels, especially since the war in Ukraine.  In the East Devon town of Colyton, the parish church has used its Lady Chapel to emphasise the need for peace and reconciliation in the hope of ending the conflict in that country.

The colours of the Ukrainian and Russian flags have been used to decorate the screen, as seen above. Next to the blue and yellow drapes of Ukraine’s flag are printed posters displaying a prayer composed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and another by the Rev Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.   

In East Budleigh, 40 minutes' walk from where I live, there’s already a Peace Chapel. 

 

But fewer people now will ever know about Salem Chapel. Picking up speed along the B3178 as they pass East Budleigh most drivers barely notice the two cream coloured old buildings on the lane which leads to the village. A second glance might tell you that they seem a bit special, sitting behind that brick wall with its metal gate crowned by a wrought-iron frame supporting a lamp.  

The stories about it tend to dwell on smugglers of the past who stored barrels of brandy in the roof space of the main building.

Some tell of ghosts, especially one about a ‘grey lady’ who has attracted occasional  researchers into the paranormal, followed naturally enough by television cameras.    

The Brick Cross near East Budleigh 

The story of a witch burnt in the 16^th century at the crossroads just a few minutes away makes many people sure that there must be a connection between Salem Chapel and Salem in Massachusetts. After all, many Americans refer to it as the Witch City because of those horrific trials conducted in Salem during the 1690s, made infamous following the production of playwright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.   

 

Photo credit: John Andrews

Visitors to Salem sometimes make yet another similarly understandable mistake. The statue of Roger Conant, placed outside the Witch Museum in Salem, wrongly gives the impression that he dabbled in the black arts.

Actually East Budleigh’s Salem Chapel has absolutely nothing to do with Salem in Massachusetts. Although, by a strange coincidence, the founder of Salem was born in East Budleigh.

 

The statue of King William III (1650-1702) at Brixham, where he landed on 5 November 1688. Image credit: Steve Daniels; www.geograph.org.uk; Wikipedia

For me, the circumstances in which East Budleigh’s Salem Chapel was built have much more to do with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. That event saw the end of the type of absolute monarchy represented by the Stuart kings, and the beginnings of democracy. A bloodless revolution heralded freedom of worship in England, and helped to bring an end to religious conflicts which had resulted in centuries of bloodshed and suffering.  

So the name seems appropriate, given that it simply means ‘peace’ in Arabic and Hebrew. 'Jerusalem' means 'city of peace'. 

There’s something symbolic about its construction in 1719, in the period of European history known as the Age of Enlightenment. Under the reign of Henry VIII, when England moved from Catholicism to Protestantism during the Reformation, the Crown had seized church properties like Otterton Priory, close to East Budleigh.

 

Brass coffin plate of Richard III Duke (1567 – 1641), lord of the manor of Otterton, now affixed to the west wall of St Michael's Church, Otterton. Image credit: LobsterThermidor- Wikimedia

 

Some more brass coffin plates of the Duke family on the west wall of St Michael’s Church, Otterton. The central plate is that of Richard VII Duke (1688-1740), who succeeded to the lordship of Otterton Manor on the death of his cousin Richard VI Duke MP (1652-1732)

Much of the church land in this area passed into the ownership of Otterton’s Duke family, and the family also had the right of appointing the local Church of England vicar, a right known by the legal term of advowson.  

 

A well preserved dissenters' place of worship in East Devon: Loughwood Meeting House near Axminster. It was built in around 1653. Photo credit: Derek Harper

But the Reformation had also led to a growth in the number of those who rejected the Church of England as being not sufficiently Protestant. East Budleigh's Salem Chapel was built by these dissenters as their own place of worship, sufficiently distant from the parish church of All Saints.  

When I discovered that the local lord of the manor Richard Duke contributed building stone to the construction of Salem Chapel I wondered whether he himself was a dissenter.

 

Portrait of John Locke FRS (1632-1704) by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Image credit: Wikipedia

The answer may lie in Richard Duke’s friendship with the philosopher John Locke, a figure who would become one of the most celebrated and influential thinkers of his time, often known as ‘the father of Liberalism’. In 1668 he had been elected as one of the early members of the Royal Society. 

The following century would see his ideas taken up by American revolutionaries; his contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. In 1683, Locke had fled to Holland, supposedly in fear of his life because of implication in the Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother the Duke of York, later James II.  

Title page of the first edition of A Letter Concerning Toleration, published in 1689. Image credit: Wikipedia  

John Locke is also celebrated for his advocacy of religious toleration. It has been pointed out that the reason for this could have been his exile in Holland, where religious issues were discussed more freely and with less danger than in any other country of 17^th century Europe.  Dutch people encouraged freethinkers and dissenters. 

In the summer of 1685, Richard Duke and a group of friends including Sir Walter Yonge of Colyton, visited Locke in Holland. At the time the philosopher was involved in the writing of his Letter Concerning Toleration. He was perhaps inspired by events in France where Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, thereby denying freedom of worship to Protestants, or Huguenots as they were known.

So Salem Chapel is more than simply a Dissenters’ place of worship. The connection to John Locke via Richard Duke represents those liberal values enshrined today in modern democracies:  the preservation of human rights and civil liberties for all in order to ensure peaceful co-existence.

  

Above is the logo of the Peace Museum in Bradford, Yorkshire, the only one of its kind in the UK. It has a website at www.peacemuseum.org.uk 

In these troubled times of the 22^nd century, with conflict breaking out in various countries, bringing us closer to the terrifying prospect of WWIII, Salem Chapel might have been just the right place for exhibitions and events to promote peace. But the building has closed its doors, with no indication as to when it will reopen.

 

In 1998 it was acquired by the Historic Chapels Trust, a charity which undertook a massive two-year programme of restoration, completed in 2006 and costing £700,000.  

The Trust stated at the time that it wished the building to be used by the local community of East Budleigh and surrounding area, and a Friends of Salem Chapel group was established. Both secular and religious activities were organized: the former included talks, craft fairs, exhibitions, musical activities and literary events.

   

The Chapel also had an ordained Minister who provided, in the Trust’s words, ‘Baptism. Marriage, single sex marriages, Reaffirming of Vows of Marriage, Marriage Blessings, Christian Counselling, Christian tutoring, Home Pastoral Care, also Funeral and Memorial Services, Chapel Services, and Prayer meetings if requested’.

  

 

An example of one of the events which took place in Salem Chapel: Blitz and Peaces was presented by Exmouth local historian Arthur Cook, who published a book, Exmouth At War in 2010

However in 2018 the Historic Chapels Trust announced that because of the uncertainty of future funding its office would close with immediate effect and its work would be managed on its behalf by the Churches Conservation Trust, an Anglican not for profit organisation.

I searched on the website of the Churches Conservation Trust but failed to find any mention of Salem Chapel. A mystery!

So I think I might have to imagine this place for Peace, filling it with images from the internet and curated into some kind of order. I could invite my peace-loving friends and others to make their own suggestions. They could choose from the truly massive gallery of artists and writers worldwide who have expressed their hatred of war and violence of any kind through their work. Would anyone like to start?