Though they're easy to overlook and oddly uncelebrated beyond the poems of John Betjeman, nonconformist chapels are among the quieter delights of the English countryside. Restrained in style and modest in size, these buildings capture the alternatives to establishment Christianity that thrived in 18th- and 19th-century Britain. Today, thanks to declining congregations, many such mute memorials stand empty or have been converted for secular use. With high ceilings and ample light, they work particularly well as artists' studios, perhaps because artists tend to be nonconformists themselves.
展开▼
