St John’s Chapel, Deritend

History

A chapel across the river

In the fourteenth century Deritend was not part of Birmingham at all. It lay on the far bank of the River Rea, a hamlet in the huge parish of Aston, and Aston church was a long walk away. In winter the river flooded.

So the people of Deritend and Bordesley got a chapel of their own. In 1381 they won an agreement that let them appoint their own chaplain in the newly built chapel of St John the Baptist. The reason, as the Victoria County History puts it, was “the distance … from the parish church and the flooding of the river in winter”. The bishop ratified it, and in 1383 a licence was granted to endow a chaplain.

That right was precious, and it lasted. The chapel was tied to the guild of Deritend, which in the early sixteenth century paid two priests, one of them a schoolmaster. Centuries later the inhabitants were still electing their own minister. At the election of 15 June 1870 the winner took 3,800 votes to 2,299. The right ended only in 1890, when St John’s became a parish.

Brick, bells and a martyr

The medieval chapel was small, with a steep roof and a little bell-turret. William Hutton, the town’s first historian, did not admire it. He said it resembled “a barn, with something like an awkward dove-coat, at the west end, by way of steeple”.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

In 1735 it was rebuilt in brick, with tall round-headed windows. The tower was still unfinished in 1752 and was completed about 1762, in two stages crowned with a balustrade and urns. Hutton blamed “the inconsiderate architect of Deritend chapel” who, anxious to face due east, “lost the line of the street”. The old maps bear him out: the church sat at a skew to the road.

Eight bells by Robert Wells of Aldbourne were hung in 1776, with a clock. On 29 October 1883 a bust was unveiled to John Rogers, born in Deritend. Rogers edited the “Matthew” Bible and in 1555 became the first Protestant burned under Mary I, at Smithfield in London.

Bombs and the road

In 1939 the parish was united with St Basil’s and the site was sold to the city. The church was damaged by enemy action in 1940, used as a store from about 1943, and demolished in 1947. The widened Digbeth and High Street Deritend, reopened on 22 July 1953, now runs over most of the site.

The roadworks turned up something older still. In 1953 misfired pottery was found south of the road, the first sign that the medieval jugs and cooking pots now called Deritend ware had been made nearby.

What is left

A bronze tablet on the south side of High Street Deritend records the church and tells passers-by that “the altar stood about 17 feet in front of this tablet”. Beside it is a Birmingham Civic Society blue plaque to John Rogers.

The bells had a stranger afterlife. In 1958 they were broken up at Taylor’s foundry in Loughborough and recast for Bishop Latimer Memorial Church. That ring proved too heavy for its tower, and in 1972 it was rehung at St John the Evangelist, Perry Barr. The metal that once rang over the Rea for Deritend’s own chapel still hangs in a church tower in north Birmingham.

Why it disappeared

Wartime destruction · Road building

The parish was united with St Basil’s in 1939 and the site sold to the city. The church was damaged by enemy action in 1940, used as a store from about 1943 and demolished in 1947. Its ground went into the widened Digbeth and High Street Deritend, reopened in 1953.