Mill Hill Chapel: Social History Project

During this public history project, we took two trips down to Mill Hill Chapel and an additional trip to the Local Studies Library located within Leeds City Library. These trips were very beneficial for us as it was our only opportunity to look at research which we could use as a consequence of our group researching the least documented period. The majority of the information we needed we were unable to find online. The original building was knocked down in 1847. Seeing pictures of the original building in Mill Hill and comparing it to the new structure was very interesting.

One of the hardest parts of doing this research was understanding how to implement it into our final work in a way which was accessible to everyone, and everyone could interpret easily. It was very helpful, at the time of doing this research, to be able to look at the previous public history projects published by Leeds Beckett University and the terminology they used as it gave us a starting point for our own public history project.

We have discovered a great deal about Mill Hill Chapel and its ministers during our extensive research, especially during the initial years of 1672–1767. We have discovered that certain areas are more difficult than others to work on during this public history project. There is not an abundance of primary and secondary research available for the Chapel because our first piece of study has to date back to the 17th century. The closest thing we could locate to primary research consisted of maybe five books and a few images provided to us by Jo James, the current minister of Mill Hill Chapel, whose input has been invaluable.

Mill Hill Chapel was a very interesting piece of infrastructure to study with a lot of history in the building and within the ministers who have preached there. We have chosen ministers who did the most and had the biggest impact on Mill Hill Chapel within the years 1672-1767. As a consequence of the lack of information, we chose to study four different ministers. We chose Richard Stretton, who was the first Minister of the Chapel, Thomas Sharp, his successor, Timothy Manlove, his successor, and finally Peter Peters, his successor. Whilst learning about these we learned the importance of Mill Hill Chapel to the people of Leeds.

If we were to take part in another public history project in the future, I think it would be beneficial to work on a project which was around the 19th century or involved a more well-known figure who can be easily researched online and in books. An example of a figure within this project is Joseph Priestly, who was the Minister in 1767 but was also a significant figure in Unitarian history, particularly in the history of Leeds. This therefore means that it would have been much easier to research online and in books for information surrounding his life and work, whereas Richard Stretton in 1677 had less significance aside from his education and being the first Minister of the Chapel. As he doesn’t hold such an important figure in the history of Mill Hill, the lack of books on him made him much harder to research. The only person who holds significance in the period we researched in our public history project was Ralph Thoresby, a notable congruent, but his significance comes from a range of things, not just his impact on Mill Hill Chapel.

Overall, I feel that this public history project and our research will have a legacy beyond the end of the module itself as Mill Hill Chapel is an important and integral part of the city of Leeds’s history. Public history allows us as historians to be critical and self-aware, but also to have fun and freedom within projects which otherwise may not have been studied (Jordanova, L. 2000, p.21).

Bibliography

• Garside, I. (2023) Mill Hill Chapel Leeds [Photograph]
• Jordanova, L. J. (2000) “Public History,” History Today, 50(5), pp. 20–1.