St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church, Overseal, Derbyshire, Church History

Derbyshire Places of Worship

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St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church, Overseal

St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church,
Woodville Road / Main Street, DE12 6JG,
Overseal, Derbyshire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.
Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in 1841, and we understand it is still open.

St Matthew's Church was built between 1840 and 1841 as a chapel of ease of the parish of "Seal" (or Seile), at the time in the county of Leicestershire, described in Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) "a parish in the western division of the hundred of Goscote, county of Leicester, 5 miles (S.W. by W.) from Ashby de la Zouch, containing, exclusively of a portion of the hamlet of Donisthorpe which is in this parish, 1160 inhabitants". It was transferred to Derbyshire in 1897.
It is a pretty little church, designed by Thomas Johnson of Lichfield. It consists of chancel, added in 1908, nave, and aisles, with a three-stage tower, described admirably on the British Listed Buildings website, as having "a polygonal staircase turret to north-east corner...a moulded pointed west door with double studded wooden doors... a diamond shaped clockface... Y-tracery pointed louvred bell openings, and above... a pyramidal plain tile roof with belled eaves". A peal of 8 bells was given to the church to commemorate World War I casualties. Three nave windows, and the original east window all have brightly coloured Chartres-style stained glass of 1841.
Early Maps show a school adjacent the Church, to the east. This later became the Church Hall, but today appears to be in private ownership.
The return to the Religious Census of 1851 for St Matthew's Church apparently doesn't survive, but the following note, following Overseal Baptist Church (HO 129/414/2/3/7) in the bundle, appears to relate to it:
The diminished number of the Congregation yesterday was owing to particular local Circumstances.
The Average Number given in this return is, if any thing, below the mark.
About 2/3 of the Afternoon Congregation consists of persons not present at the Morning Service.
Owing to distance from Church, only one School [sic] attends in the Afternoon.
Moving forward to the present, the Church is now better known as "St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church", this Local Ecumenical Partnership arising (I assume) after the congregation joined with that of Overseal Methodist Church when the latter was closed in 1993. For details of the latter, see elsewhere in this database.
See the South Derbyshire Methodist Circuit (SDMC-onthenet) - the "Voice of the Methodist Church in South Derbyshire" - for current information.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SK2948515462. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church, Overseal shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Overseal shown on a Google Map.
Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Overseal, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
You may want to visit South Derbyshire Methodist Circuit (SDMC-onthenet) website for present-day information.

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.

Information last updated on 19 Dec 2018 at 16:09.

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This Report was created 27 Dec 2024 - 12:09:52 GMT from information held in the Derbyshire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 13 Oct 2021 at 14:33.

URL of this page: https://churchdb.gukutils.org.uk/DBY1269.php

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