John Wesley was a frequent visitor to Bedford from 1753 onwards, and found the town's tradition of religious dissent welcoming. The congregation at Wesleyan meetings had increased to more than 750 by the 1830s. Built in 1804, the Chapel painted by Fisher was the third official meeting place of Bedford's Wesleyan community to have existed on the same site, where Bedford Central Library and  Beales store now stand. The first meeting place had been a corn loft in which the stench of swine had proved a continual problem, the second  a room built for them in 1763; the third, a chapel, was regularly extended until it was found necessary to build a completely new one in 1832.The lithograph above shows the Chapel of 1832 and the four doric columns of the Bedford Rooms built in 1834 and still standing.