Monument record MDR12640 - United Methodist Free Church (site of), Smedley Street, Matlock Town

There is a United Methodist Free Church situated here on the 1st edition OS map. (1) By the 2nd edition OS map, the building is no longer labelled as a Methodist Church. (2) The United Methodist Free Church that once stood within the grounds of Smedley's Hydro (now County Hall) was one of several churches built by John Smedley. Sadly for Smedley, his church did not last as a place of worship and was eventually demolished. At least the spire was still standing in c. 1955, but it had been demolished by 1964. Some years after John Smedley had died the church was converted to a dynamo house. Du Garde Peach wrote that in 1886 'electric lighting came to Smedley's, and it is interesting to note that the appreciation of scientific inventions which characterised John Smedley still animated his successors'. Benjamin Bryan stated that the engines and dynamos (for a newly enlarged Smedley's in 1901) were 'placed in the church erected by Mr Smedley for the performance of non-sectarian worship according to his own ideas'. Arthur Mee described it thus: 'the embattled building with a tower and a tall spire facing the church (All Saints') was a chapel where John Smedley used to preach; now it is an engine-house for running his hydro [1937].' (3) Smedley's chapel, which used to be situated beyond the Winter Gardens (to the left of the West Wing), was demolished in 1958. (4) The site has been redeveloped [2011]. (5)