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St Matthew's Church (with St Mary),
Clarence Street / St George's Place,
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

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 1859, and we understand it is still open.

The present church was completed in 1879, and replaced an earlier church, built in 1859. Its erection was largely due to the efforts of the then Rector of St Mary's, Canon Bell. He had wanted it to replace St Mary's as the parish church, but there was such strong opposition to this that he was unable to proceed with the change.

Ironically, the churches now (in 2011) share the same ministry, and both are Listed Buildings - see also the British Listed Buildings website.

The tower was raised, and spire was added to the church in 1883, but the spire was removed as unsafe in 1952, and the upper part of the tower in 1971, so the church we see today is most probably as it would have appeared when newly built. It is not known at present whether the early church had a "graveyard" - though St Matthew's Church is listed amongst the Memorial Inscriptions Gloucestershire Family History Society have transcribed, these may be memorials inside the church.

The land it stands on was once occupied by the Court House, where manorial courts were held, and later "The Great House", the residence of Lady Stapleton, which has been quoted as the "centre of Cheltenham's social life for over 100 years".

St Matthew with St Mary became a shared use church in 1972, and is now used for methodist worship as well as anglican. [Sources: Hart, Gwen - A History of Cheltenham (1965), Blake, Steven - Cheltenham, A Pictorial History (Phillimore, 1996), An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham, the Parish Church of St Mary, Cheltenham Guidebook (Canon G.W. Hart, 1983)]

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 SO9471222504. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• St Matthew's Church (with St Mary), Cheltenham shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Cheltenham 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 Cheltenham, 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)
• Find the information referred to via the search interface to An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham (null) (verified 2018-11-11)

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.