Christopher Wakeling obituary

My friend and former work colleague Christopher Wakeling, who has died aged 74, was a specialist in the architecture of Protestant nonconformity. He spent his academic career unpicking its traditions, from Quaker meeting houses and Baptist and Congregationalist chapels to the galleried spaces of later Methodism. His book on the subject, Chapels of England: Buildings of Protestant Nonconformity (2017), remains definitive.

From 1977 to 2011 Christopher’s career was spent as an extramural visual arts lecturer at Keele University (where I worked), initially travelling to his various, scattered teaching sites on a moped with a projector on its pannier and a projection screen across his shoulder like a longbow. His mode of transport soon changed, but his long 1970s hair survived. He was an inspiring teacher of older adults, quietly sponsoring their ability to look critically at paintings and buildings.

Extramural lecturers at university in those days were not expected to become researchers, but like others, Christopher did so on the side, becoming an eminent architectural historian and conservationist despite having to cope with teaching an astoundingly broad curriculum.

Alongside his lecturing work he served as president of the Chapels Society and on many Historic England advisory bodies, regional trusts and museums. In addition he played a pivotal role in the rescue of Stoke-on-Trent’s huge chapel of the Methodist New Connexion, Bethesda, which is still undergoing an extensive restoration scheme. He retired from Keele in 2011 and was appointed OBE in 2019. His final project was the revision of the Staffordshire volume of Pevsner’s Buildings of England, completed in the face of serious illness. It will be published in 2024.

Born in Cardiff, the second child of John Wakeling, a bus depot worker, and Hilda (nee Underhill), a housekeeper, Christopher was proud of his Welsh heritage, and claimed a place in Cardiff history when he joined his grandfather, a tram driver, on the last tram run in the city in 1950.

His parents moved into the management of council-run care homes in Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, which helped Christopher to develop a talent for talking to older people. After attending Cardiff high school and then Cheltenham grammar school, he studied history of art at the University of East Anglia, where he met Marianne Windsor. They were married in 1971, while still students, and he wangled leave of absence so they could be together on her year of language study in Germany. A mutual sympathy for Quakerism underpinned their long collaboration.

He is survived by Marianne and his sister, Alyson.