Derbyshire Places of Worship

Default Image Sorry, we do not have an Image of this Place of Worship We do not have a
Photograph at present.

Image by courtesy of
openclipart.org
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:

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.

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.

Search for other Places of Worship in Derbyshire, or in another County in this Database

Please choose a County by selecting one of the Tabs below.
Note: you MUST choose a County - searching all four at once is not an option!

Search Tips:

You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

You can further refine your search by supplying other search terms.

Please note the above provides a search of selected fields in the Derbyshire section of the Places of Worship Database on this site (churchdb.gukutils.org.uk) only. For other counties, or for a full search of the Database, you might like to try the site's Google Custom Search, which includes full webpage content.

Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find places of worship in the present day.

Please also remember that whilst the above account may suggest that St Matthew's Anglican & Methodist Church remains open and accessible, this may not remain so.

Do not copy any part of this page or website other than for personal use or as given in our Terms and Conditions of Use.

You may wish to take a look at our About the Places of Worship Database page for an overview of the information provided, and any limitations which may be present.

This Report was created 25 Nov 2024 - 01:52:27 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
Logo by courtesy of the Open Clip Art Library