Memorandum. March 4, 1748.--The Faculty for Rebuilding and enlarging
ye Chapel of Willenhall authorized ye then present Ministr, ye Revd.
Titus Neve to charge and receive for Breaking up ye Ground or
Building a Vault in ye said Chapel ye sum of two Guineas and also one
Guinea for opening ye same at any time afterwards to him and his
successors. The Intention of this Siquise was to prevent frequent
interments which are a common annoyance to ye Living Votaries for
whose use ye Chapel was erected.

From the Diary of Dr. Richard Wilkes is extracted the following
illuminative entry--a contemporary record of the state of the ancient
edifice:--

May 6, 1748.--This day I set out the foundation of a new church in
this town; for the old one being half timber, the sills, pillars,
etc., were so decayed that the inhabitants, when they met together,
were in great danger of being killed. It appeared to me, that the
old church must have been rebuilt, at least the middle aisle of it;
and that the first fabrick was greatly ornamented, and must have been
the gift of some rich man, or a number of such, the village then
being but thin of inhabitants, and, before the iron manufacture was
begun here, they could not have been able to erect such a fabrick;
but no date, or hint relating to it, was to be found; nor is anything
about it come to us by tradition.

Willenhall's rebuilt church was completed in 1749, and had a formal
re-opening on October 30th of that year. An entry in the Registers
(which has already been quoted in Chapter XVIII.) seems to intimate that
the regular services were not resumed till January 20th, 1750.

This edifice was a fair specimen of the crudities which went to make up
the "churchwarden architecture" of the period; consisting mainly of a
plain, box-like nave, pierced on either side by half a dozen staring
oblong windows, and having in the whole of its hulk not one curved line
or rounded form by which relief could be afforded to the eye at any
single point. At one end of this unimposing structure was a flattened
scutiform excrescence which served as the chancel; from the others rose
the tower, the only feature by which the building could be recognised as
a church. The tower, not to put the rest of the church out of
countenance, was equally crude; its window piercings being as debased in
the Gothic style as was its cornice in quasi-classic