CAN Rewind readers tell us about one of Swindon’s more obscure old buildings?

For many years it was a place of worship for local Methodists, who had previously met in each other’s homes.

Now the building, a few dozen yards along the road from the Spotted Cow at Coate, stands dilapidated, boarded, chained up and fenced off.

Malcolm and Julie Pitt, who moved into a house overlooking the road last year, brought the structure to our attention.

They became intrigued after helping to prevent it from being damaged further and perhaps destroyed.

Malcolm, 70, who worked in finance for a law firm before retiring, said: “One of our neighbours came and knocked on our door one evening and said: ’There’s a fire over there.’

“We went over and the under manager from the Spotted Cow came out and said he was going to call the fire brigade. He said there were a number of occasions when people have got into it to sleep rough and so forth.

“Two fire engines came and, we assume they doused it all out.

“Then we just decided to look online and find out what it was.”

They suspected it was a religious building and turned out to be correct.

“We discovered that it was a Primitive Methodist Chapel,” said Malcolm.

The couple have studied old records and maps, and tracked down an old Methodist Church handbook which listed the building as having been put up in 1888.

Although the chapel is barely larger than a cottage, it was said to have had a capacity of about 70 worshippers, and slightly larger numbers are listed in some subsequent church records.

Maps refer to it as a Methodist place of worship until about 1940. It is then referred to simply as a chapel until about 1963.

At some point an extension was added, and Malcolm and Julie discovered that the building was used as an engineering workshop.

Planning permission for use as a workshop is recorded as having been given in 1982, and as recently as 2013 the building bore a sign identifying it as Chapel Engineering.

Malcolm and Julie have been unable to discover who owns it, but their reason for wanting to learn more is simple: “We just thought it would be nice to tidy it up and put it back into use.”

We’d be happy to hear from anybody who can add to the story, especially if they have pictures or remember worshipping at the chapel.