A small derelict agricultural building beside the main road through the Dorset village of Tolpuddle is to be restored as “a quiet place” to sit and think, in honour of the structure’s little known role in British trade union history. 

A sycamore tree in the centre of the village, a few hundred yards from the old barn, is famous as the meeting place of the six agricultural labourers who became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, after they were sentenced to transportation to Australia in 1834 for daring to collectively demand better wages and working conditions, as their already miserable pay was being cut from nine to six shillings a week. 

They were pardoned two years later after their cause became a national campaign, and a petition was signed by 800,000 people.  Their history is celebrated in a festival and rally organised every summer by the Trades Union Congress, and told in a small museum in the village. 

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew McCarthy, the chairman of the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust, inside the building.  Photograph: Tom Wren/BNPS

Few who come to the rallies know that years before the meetings under the the tree, most of the men met regularly in the little building, which was originally the plainest and most modest of one-room Methodist chapels. 

It was built in 1818 by two of the martyrs, George Loveless and Thomas Standfield on a tiny patch of land they leased beside the latter’s cottage home.  The pair were almost certainly the two who were recorded as returning with “their hearts glowing with sacred flame” after walking the 20 miles to and from a Methodist meeting in the town of Wareham.  At least four of the six martyrs were Methodist. 

It became redundant when the village got a larger Methodist chapel in 1862, and was altered to become a small barn and stable. 

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An artist’s impression of how the restored chapel will look.  Photograph: Adrian Whittlesea/Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust

Andrew McCarthy, who lives a few houses away, thinks the two martyrs must have built it with their own hands. “ It looks like a barn because essentially that’s what it was – the type of building they saw every day, made of simple cheap materials, cob with a bit of brick and flint, sticks and branches and thatch for the roof.” 

McCarthy chairs the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust, which bought the building just in time to save it from collapse and learned a few weeks ago that it had won a development grant of almost £65,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund – and is on track for a full grant of almost £350,000. 

The building is listed Grade II*, the second highest category, in honour of its importance not just for the martyrs’ story but as a rare survival of one of the simplest early Methodist chapels.  The trust succeeded in buying it for £25,000, after the farmer had turned down approaches both from the Methodists and the TUC.  The building had spent many years on the at risk register of nationally important buildings in danger of being lost forever, too derelict even for storage. 

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, attends the annual rally in Tolpuddle to commemorate the martyrs.  Photograph: Geoff Moore/Rex/Shutterstock

The old chapel will be restored as simply as possible, reinstating the original entrance door and restoring the one attempt at grandeur, a gothic arched window.  But the interior will be left empty, apart from a bench, and an old Methodist bible given to McCarthy by a garden centre owner who found it – wrapped in plastic – in one of her polytunnels. 



The village has lost its shop, but still has a village hall, a pub, and the museum. 

“We don’t need to duplicate any of those things,” McCarthy said. “ What we want is a place where people can escape from the busy world for a little while, and just sit down on the bench and be quiet for a bit – and think about the history of the martyrs, what they believed in, their connection with the land and this building.  Or – they can just sit.”