OUR HISTORY

The Chapel of Light
(formerly Wilton Spiritualist
Church) was not always
in Wilton -
nor was
that always
it’s name.

It began in
1938 in the
Assembly Rooms in
Salisbury (now the upper
floor of Waterstones book
shop) when a famous medium
of the day, Winifred Moyes, spoke at the inaugural meeting. Miss Moyes was the founder of the Greater World Christian Spiritualist League.

It was claimed that her guide was the Roman soldier who offered the sponge to Jesus as he hung on the cross. Whether true or not, he gave teachings of a very high spiritual order, over many years, through Miss Moyes, which are still used in Christian Spiritualist churches to this day.

And so, the Salisbury Christian Spiritualist Church was born, using the old British Legion Hall as it’s first home. The prime movers at the time were Dr Martin Griffin and his wife, May, who were to contribute hugely to the early history of the church - as did their daughter, Pamela, a trained opera singer, who took on the organ duties for some years after her father’s passing into Spirit in 1969.

In 1943 Dr Griffin went into military service and May took over the Presidency and kept this position until 1974 when a stroke curtailed her activities. In 1996 Mrs. Griffin joined her husband in Spirit at the grand old age of 90.

The Church had many different homes in the early days - in dusty halls heated by oil stoves and, for a time, a music shop in Queen Street Chequer in Salisbury. Eventually, it found a permanent home in Greencroft Street, in an upper room next to the Barley Mow and so remianed from 1947 right up until 1963. Once more, eviction loomed.

At the Church’s spiritual circle, Dr Griffin’s Guide told the sitters that they had found a Church. It was disused and they would recognise it by a feature on the chancel arch, being a bunch of grapes in plaster on one side of the archway and a different design on the other side. About this time, the chapel of the old Wilton workhouse - now now developed into modern residential units - was being offered for rent and a small group of committee members went to view it. They knew immediately from the grapes design on one side of the chancel arch that this was to be their Church.

The rent of £4 per week was steep, but their resolve had been strenthened by the Spirit messages they had received over the previous months. If the costs were not always met by the small congregation, the Griffins would always quietly make it up from their own pockets.

However, the rent was never increased from their occupation in 1963. It was furnished, after a fashion, with anything members could beg, give or borrow. Bits of carpet, coconut matting, deck chairs and rank of three forlorn cinema seats bolted to a few planks to hold them steady.

In 1975, the grocery wholesalers who owned the Church relocated to Calne and the committee asked if they could buy the Church. The estate agents recommended that the cost should be equal to eight years rent. As the rent was still £4 per week, this worked out at the princely sum of £1,600. Since the smallest house in Salisbury would have cost you £6,000 at the time, such a small price for a hundred seat Church with a hall behind has to rank as a bargain. The Church was affiliated to the Spiritualists’ National Union in the mid 1970’s.

Today, the Church looks very different to how it did in the sixties, and comfortable with modern centrally heating with padded seating.

As for the couple of dozen people who used to go there - well, most of them are in the Spirit World now, but surely smiling down at the congregations and meetings we enjoy today...