Old St Chad's, Shrewsbury

Old St Chad’s in Shrewsbury is now a small and peculiar building in the town, but it was once a famous parish church. In 1788, the central tower collapsed, taking most of the building down with it. Curiously, the famous engineer, Thomas Telford, had warned of such a collapse that very year. The signs must have been there, but the wider public and church authorities either chose to ignore them or thought it was beyond their ability to address. All that now remains is the old Lady Chapel, and this is kept locked. Thankfully, a newer, classically-styled replacement was constructed on the other side of town, but more of that another day.

We live in days in which churches, by which I mean denominations, are liable to fall. Depleted numbers, poor finances, shortages of clergy are all symptoms. This century will see the demise of many a British denomination. St Chad’s tower only fell because of structural weaknesses which could have been prevented: there are older towers still extant and as strong as the day they were built. No, there was a rottenness at its core which Telford clearly saw but other could not, or would not. Much of British Protestantism has been rotten to the core since the closing decades of the nineteenth century. For this reason, the great Mr Spurgeon left the Baptist Union. Poisonous theological liberalism, with its denial of scripture, its despising of the Cross and denigration of the Lord Jesus, was spreading like a cancer from the colleges and seminaries into chapels and pulpits. Eating away at the foundations, the towers weakened and begin to wobble and topple. The crashes will follow, but, unlike Old St Chad’s, they will not be missed.