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Wesleyan Chapel,
Chapel Street,
Bledington, Gloucestershire.

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 1847, but we understand it was closed before 1979.

Both St Leonard's Church, and this Chapel have an address of "Chapel Street", though they are at diametrically opposite ends of the village, when curiously, Chapel Street encircles the village on 3 sides. The fourth side is Main Street.

At the time of the Religious Census of 1851, there were two meeting places listed for Bledington for Wesleyan Methodists; neither were used exclusively as a place of worship. The first was recorded as a "Meeting House" (HO 129/342/1/14/20), for Wesleyan Methodists, erected before 1800. It contained 80 sittings, and the average attendance to afternoon service was 70. The return was completed by Joseph Perry, "one of the Leaders of the class", whose address was "Kingham near Chipping Norton". Though he estimated an attendance of 20 to morning service, and 80 in the evening on March 30, he remarked that "the Evening services are held only a few times during the Summer".

The second entry (HO 129/342/1/14/21) was for a building which had seating for 80, and on March 30 1851 it was estimated to be full for afternoon service. The return was completed by Saml. Cooke, its Minister, who lived in "Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire".

Perhaps these two entries were descriptive of the same congregation. At any rate, it seems unlikely there were two places for Wesleyan Methodists to meet. The Victoria County History series: A History of the County of Gloucester, Volume 6: Slaughter hundred, and the upper divisions of Tewkesbury and Westminster hundreds (1965), pp.27-33 (Bledington) reports that by 1847 Bledington had a small community of Protestant dissenters, when the house of one of them, John Benfield, was registered as a place of religious worship. It refers also to the 1851 census, but adds that a permanent building ("a small red brick chapel") was built that year, to which a Sunday school was added about 1870. In 1960, the chapel was still part of the Chipping Norton circuit, but apparently it closed some time after 1974 (when it is marked on my OS 1:50,000 Map), as on OS 1979-1980 1:2,500 the premises are labelled as "Chapel House".

Denomination

Now or formerly Wesleyan Methodist.

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 SP2458122885. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Wesleyan Chapel, Bledington shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Bledington 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 Bledington, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• The Victoria County History series: A History of the County of Gloucester, Volume 6: Slaughter hundred, and the upper divisions of Tewkesbury and Westminster hundreds (null) (verified 2018-11-06)

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.