Talk:Waterloo church

Article Title

Paul, I'm a little puzzled as to your choice of title for your article. Almost all, without exception, the text books and works I consult refer to these churches as "Commissioner Churches" or "Commissioners' Churches". I accept that "Waterloo church" may have been a popular early 19th century name but it hardly ever used in the 21st century. What is your reason for choosing this as your main title for the article? Can you justify it and what are your sources for preferring it over the more common "Commissioner Churches"?--DonBarton 14:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Waterloo" churches

Is it not pretty clear from the works of Michael Port and others that memorials to the fallen of Waterloo or tokens of the nation's gratitude these churches were not? Lord Liverpool and others in Parliament made no bones about them being built to combat Non-conformity and the problems of rapid urban growth. Non-conformity in the years following the French Revolution, I have read, was feared as a fertile breeding ground of "proletarianised radicalism". There is evidence to suggest that some of the Yorkshire Luddites of 1813 and Pentrich Rebels of 1817 were Methodists [although whether Wesleyean. New Connexion or Primitive is not clear]. I cannot recall the precise references as I write but it would be no trouble to find them if need be.

The four 1818 Act churches built in Sheffield were, and two still are, substantial structures of stone. One which, St Mary's, resisted the best efforts of the Chartists and Hitler to remove it.

Charles Pooter, Sheffield.

Sorry about the strange format of the above. I have not got the hang of doing it properly.--Chaspooter 21:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Charles - I think that is what you intended.

I am inclined to agree with you, hence my comment about the article title. I suspect Waterloo was an excuse for allocating the money and many of the churches were built as much to counter the radical elements of society (be they the nonconformists or the chartists) as to evangelise the poor and unchurched and consequently the name Waterloo Church may have only been used by a certain group of Anglicans but by the end of the 19th century the name Commissioner Church had been almost universally adopted.--DonBarton 23:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don,

Thank you for sorting the formatting out.--Chaspooter 13:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The 1818 Act was a long time in coming. From reading the Parliamentary Debates of the time it is clear that Spencer Perceval was contemplating such a measure in the weeks before his murder [1810]. The National Schools Act was passed in 1811. I wonder if it was all part of a perhaps unconscious desire by Lord Liverpool and his administration to preserve the world and institutions of their youth in the only way they knew how - see various comments in Waterloo to Peterloo [R.J. White, Waterloo to Peterloo, Peregrine, 1968, p24]. In terms of social teaching the urban poor would be exposed to nothing too radical in an Anglican cnhurch - see Hart in Donajgrodzki [ed],Social Control in 19th Century Britain, [Croom Helm, 1977, p108 - 137].Chaspooter 13:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

England or United Kingdom?

The lead said that "Waterloo Churches" were built in England, whilst the main body of the article said United Kingdom. I can't find anything to support either, but it needs clarifying.

I've provisionally changed this to the United Kingdom, it being more inclusive/ambiguous than England, but of course this could be less accurate. I suspect it could be just England owing to the Church of England, but I don't know - it needs an expert's eye on this one. --Jza84 | Talk 17:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article title (again)

WP requires us to use the most commonly-known name in accordance with WP:AT - note: "The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists." WP:ILIKEIT is not adequate. This means that the more common name will normally take precedence. "Waterloo Church" appears to still be a far more commonly-known term for those churches commissioned under the Million Pound Act - noting that there was no official or legal name for churches so created other than referring to the "Church Building Acts of 1818, 1819 and 1822". I have just done a scan of literature that I have to hand - Weinreb's London Encyclopaedia uses "Waterloo Church" exclusively. The Encyclopaedia Britannica has no description under Ecclesiastical Commissioner or Church Commissioner, nor Waterloo church. English Heritage uses both terms in its Survey of London. Curl's Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture indexes it under "Commissioner's church", but then says "also known as Waterloo churches". A carefully-restrictive google.co.uk search for "Waterloo churches" reveals 3160 references - "commissioner's churches" has less than 800. Therefore it has to be Waterloo, and I will reset the redirection accordingly. (This topic hasn't been raised here for years, and I'm surprised the later Commissioner's page has existed for two years without the duplication being noticed, but maybe this underscores the point about Commissioner's Church being a lesser-used term).

More than a dozen people have edited this article and may have contributions to make. I therefore point out that the article's talk page here is the correct place to have a discussion about a specific article - not behind the scenes on personal talk pages. Looking at those personal pages, I see that there is a proposal to merge the text in the two articles, and I welcome this. However, if reconstructing the list of churches, please remember that the geographic grouping was important - 38 churches were built in London as a result of the Acts. The Lambeth four were named in a particular sequence important to their commission. Also the style adopted was typically either Greek or Gothic, and the architect could also be significant. Ephebi (talk) 00:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was responsible for creating the article Commissioners' church; it came about like this. I first learnt about this group of churches when I was doing an OU course on Religion in Victorian Britain; at no point in the associated text book was the word "Waterloo" used. Since coming to WP I have written a lot (100s) of new articles on churches, and in the Buildings of England (Pevsner) books and on Images of England, I repeatedly came across the term "Commissioners' church". I could find no article on them in WP (being ignorant at the time of the Waterloo nickname), so I wrote one. In December 2009 DonBarton made a recommendation that it should be merged with Waterloo church; I must admit my ignorance in never having heard this term previously. I noticed that the Waterloo church article was inadequately referenced, so I set about combining the two articles, with full referencing. When complete, I moved it into the main space with the title Commissioners' church, which I thought was "correct" and certainly more encyclopaedic (it was not a matter of "I like it"). Despite the cogent arguments above, I am not convinced that the article should be named Waterloo church. We can all do surveys, and mine reveal the opposite. In the eight Pevsner books in my possession, six refer to "Commissioner's churches", while the other two make no reference; the word "Waterloo" is not used. A survey (admittedly rather rough) of Images of England tends to be in line with this. A search on "commissioners" and "church" produces 133 results, while "Waterloo" and "church" gives only 20 ( and some of these are addresses rather than titles of the types of church).

I wonder if there is a north-south divide here; I suspect that the term "Waterloo" for these churches is more common in London than in the north of England (note that 81 such churches were built in Lancashire and 106 in Yorkshire). My home town of Runcorn in northwest Cheshire has a Waterloo Bridge and a Commissioners' church (Holy Trinity Church, Runcorn), and despite living in the town for over 45 years I have never heard the church called a Waterloo church (I am reasonably knowledgeable about the history of the town having been chairman of the local history society for three years and am a close friend of the author of the standard history of the town).

So where does that leave us; how do we achieve consensus? Do we have a vote; if so how is that organised and how is the conclusion decided? It looks like we start with one vote on each side! Comments please.--Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PS The "list" part of the article has not been permanently "removed" from Commissioners' church. I am working on a more comprehensive and informative list to be published separately when I have included all I can find. In its present state it is in a sandbox here. When in the main space I hope others will add more. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:05, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ephebi I note your comment that:-

"WP requires us to use the most commonly-known name in accordance with WP:AT - note: "The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists." WP:ILIKEIT is not adequate. " I believe that Peter I. Vardy and myself are both using the most commonly-known name and are not putting forward a name used by specialists.

Like Peter I had never heard of Waterloo Church being used before I came across it being used on Wikipedia. The fact that Google has more "Waterloo churches" references than "Commissioners' churches" does not convince me that Waterloo is the better choice, particularly as most of the sites themselves go on the use words like Commissioners' churches or sometimes called Waterloo ... or Commissioners' churches, or erroneously called ... I do not consider myself a specialist despite having done a post-graduate Masters degree course in 19th Century History. There can be many reasons why there are more Google references for Waterloo than Commissioners' and interests of readers may not be one of them. Paul W, Peter I. Vardy and myself are not in any disagreement over the article merger and the preferred title being Commissioners' churches. I made the original suggestion in 2006 but did not have the time to persue it further then and as no one had objected I welcomed Peter taking the task on. With great respect is it not that you like the title Waterloo Churches rather than any indication of support for merger under the title of Waterloo Church? I certainly do not support having an article under both names. As far as I am concerned there was no behind the scenes on personal talk pages about merging the two articles. --DonBarton (talk) 00:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I too have edited the Waterloo Churches article. The first time I came across the term was when a link was made from an article I was editing. I also linked the article to Commissioners' Churches as this was the term I found in all the references and on reflection I think Commissioners' Churches a more suitable and encyclopedic term for the merged article. I would suggest that if Waterloo Churches and Commissioners' Churches were googled without the quotation marks, (which I what I tend to do and I'm sure I'm not alone), then the result would be reversed. --J3Mrs (talk) 15:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing the discussion back to the article's talk page. I appreciate the naming change has been suggested in good faith - I think we all agree that its about finding out what is the 'correct' approach from a WP perspective. Its an interesting observation if it appears that naming does follow a north-south divide.... Here in South London, the churches of St Matthew, Mark, Luke & John's are all intimately associated with Waterloo, because one is opposite Waterloo station, named of course for similar reasons. I get involved in guided tours etc down here - though my main interest is in cemeteries, not the churches per se - IME visitors seem to relate much more easily to the expression 'Waterloo church' than 'Ecclesiastical Commissioner's church'. The latter term is complicated to explain because you end having to explain that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners changed their name to Church Commissioners some years ago.

Quantifying usage has required a little bit of thought - firstly to find out what is out there in the wild - for a meaningful google search the words are too common to return unambiguous results without using quotations. Also using the plural form removed a lot of spurious references to Waterloo. Likewise the quotes are needed for the Commissioners otherwise it will return any entry with church commissioners. Secondly looking at literature - I took a look at some of the popular enclopedias aimed at a lay audience - hence the Weinreb book I mentioned. Thirdly, like all the other terms, Commissioners' church is not a formally-recognised title. In fact, as the commissioners were responsible for reorganising parishes, livings, vestries, etc, there are many churches outside of this period which could equally be referred to as a commissioners' church. If we were to be technically correct, it was public funds granted by Parliament that established these churches, under the "Act for building and promoting the building of additional churches in populous parishes", sometimes just called the "New Churches Act" Geo II, 45, with the intention of providing free pews for the poor who would otherwise turn to "vicious habits"

Careful re-reading of references has shown that I may have conflated two different viewpoints (and perhaps I am not unique in this). One aspect is the architectural influence, the other is the commissioning method. In my reading of the Great Pevsner it seems he uses 'Commissioners type' in an observational manner when he refers to the style of the building - often implying mass produced, rapidly constructed, underfunded, utilitarian and uninspiring. But then I see 'Waterloo' mentioned in the context of the mechanism of the founding Acts - such as by the late Ida Darlington in her contributions to the Survey of London, of 1955. I think this difference explains why we have come at it from different viewpoints - the architectural student might have a vocabulary to describe the stylistic influence of the construction, while the local historian might describe the mechanism of getting it constructed. It would be a useful distinction to draw out in the article, and these qualities might go some way to explain why we see different usage between north and south. Ephebi (talk) 16:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are absolutely right. Both Pevsner and Images of England use (separately) the terms "Commissioners' church" and "Commissioners' type" (of architecture). The article Commissioners' church clearly defines in the lead that the term applies only to the former. I agree that we have to be careful about this; and I think I will add a note to this effect in the article. I have been compiling lists in my sandbox here and here (two lists because one would be too long - further splitting may yet be necessary). Before this goes live I will check to see if I have included any "types"; I suspect I might have done! It is of course completely understandable why visitors to southeast London would be more comfortable with the term "Waterloo"; but this is an encyclopedia, not a visitors' guide.--Peter I. Vardy (talk) 09:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In short, if Pevsner uses "Commissioners' church" rather than "Waterloo church", I think that's the title we should be using. An example of the importance of Pevsner is that English Heritage continually refer to his work (eg: on Images of England). A quick online search of Victoria County Histories produce only one or two results for either "Waterloo church" or "Commissioners' church". Nev1 (talk) 15:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Commissioners' church updated

Now that the article entitled Commissioners' church has been expanded, do editors think that the title of this article should be made into a redirect again? The individual churches in the "list" part of this article are contained in the separate lists in the other article under "See also"; and expanded lists to eventually include all the churches are being prepared.--Peter I. Vardy (talk) 11:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the absence of any response I assume that there is no opposition to making this a redirect again.--Peter I. Vardy (talk) 20:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]