This branch of Iceland, on the corner of Albert Street and Nottingham Road in Eastwood, stands on the site of the Congregational Chapel which Lawrence attended for years, and which he described as:
Then the chapel was like home. It was a pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and flowers. And the same people had sat in the same places ever since he was a boy.
The chapel, which was demolished in the 1960s, was not only a place of worship.The various social groups which met there, such as the Literary Society, did much to foster the cultural interests of Lawrence's circle.
In a late story titled 'Autobiographical Fragment' Lawrence imagined himself falling asleep in a Derbyshire cave and waking up a thousand years later. A new civilization has emerged, and on visiting Eastwood the author finds:
We came out on top into a circular space, it must have been where our Congregational Chapel stood, and in the centre of the circle rose a tower shaped tapering rather like a lighthouse, and rosy-coloured in the lamplight. Away in the sky, at the club-shaped tip of the tower, glowed one big ball of light.
Sadly, our current civilization has replaced the 'Congo' not with a phallic symbol, but with a cut-price supermarket.
Eastwood Congregational Chapel interior
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