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Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel,
72 Penn Lane, DE73 8EP,
Melbourne, Derbyshire.

Cemeteries

We believe the Chapel did NOT have 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 1779, but we understand it was closed in 1874.

According to information supplied to me in 2004, there were three chapels on Penn Lane. A Quaker Chapel was demolished about 1987 to make way for a house extension; the original New Jerusalem Chapel is now part of Pennfield House, and this former Independent Chapel was converted into a house (Huntingdon House) in 1874. The property has been located thanks to a document Melbourne Conservation Area: Character Statement on the South Derbyshire District Council website, which mentions it twice, firstly as having a slate roof which pre-dates the introduction of Welsh slate, and secondly, in a list of properties with hipped roofs, where it is recorded as "72 Penn Lane - Huntingdon House".

The return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/444/2/2/12) for "Independent Chapel" describes a separate building in Melbourne erected in 1779 for a congregation of "Independents alias Congregationalists", used exclusively as a place of worship. There were free sittings for 50, and 190 "other" sittings, and the estimated congregation on March 30th was 32 in the morning, and 55 in the evening, with 45 Sunday Scholars to a morning class, and 51 in the afternoon. The return was completed by Joseph Watts Lethbridge, its Minister, of Melbourne, Derbyshire. He appears to have held very "progressive" views, as under the "Remarks" heading he advocated (1) "Total and immediate abolition of all Church Rates", (2) "The immediate and complete separation of the Church from the State", and (3) "The National Universities to be opened to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects".

The chapel is also mentioned in a A Short History on the Melbourne United Reformed Church website, as a forerunner of the present church (formerly Congregational), which opened in the High Street in 1871.

Denomination

Now or formerly Countess of Huntingdon.

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 Chapel was located at OS grid reference SK3869524987. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel, Melbourne shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Melbourne 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 Melbourne, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• The Local Government website of South Derbyshire District Council (null) (verified 2018-10-05)
• Information provided on the Melbourne United Reformed Church website. (verified 2018-10-10)

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.