COATHAM – Convalescent Home Chapel

Accreditation the Redcar and Saltburn by-the-Sea Gazette 27/10/1876

CONVALESCENT HOME CHAPEL

            The following paragraph, extracted from the last report of the Coatham Convalescent Home, may be interesting to some of our readers :-“Many residents at Coatham and Redcar, as well as visitors to these places, have expressed regret that the permission to occupy the sittings in the Home Chapel not required by patients has been withdrawn. This exclusion of the public has not at all arisen from the wish of the Pastor, but from the objections of the Vicar of the parish in which the Home is situated, whose objection has been upheld by the Archbishop, on the grounds that it is contrary to ecclesiastical law to admit non—residents; while a high legal authority, Mr. W. G. Phillmore, has given an opinion that even a licence to a public institution under the ‘Private Chapels Act (1871)’ would be no relief to non-residents, and that  ‘ the offices and services performed in the Chapel must be performed for the inmates of the institution only, and not for other inhabitants of the parish.’ In regard to the Home of the patients, this opposition has really tended to good, for it can easily be understood that a congregation of invalids require somewhat different consideration to an ordinary and general congregation; moreover, the crowding of the Chapel was inconvenient, so long as the non-residents and inmates attended the same services. To Rev do this, and meet the spiritual destitution in Coatham and Redcar, and offer of the use of the Chapel and the guaranteed stipend of a clergy man to minister at extra services for the public, was made by the Promoters, but not accepted by the Archbishop, though the offer was but a response to a very numerously signed Memorial of persons anxious for a continuance of the service.”

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Lol Hansom October 5, 2014 Churches, Coatham