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Zion Chapel (now Zion Church Hall),
Upper Chapel Lane,
Frampton Cotterell, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Chapel 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 1795, but we understand it was closed in 1873.

This place of worship is recorded on the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/331/4/3/7) as erected "before 1800" as a separate building, used exclusively as a place of worship. It had free seating for 379, and 141 "other" sittings, so it was quite a large building. It was also popular, as the estimated congregation on March 30th was 203 in the morning, and 318 in the evening, with 184 Sunday Scholars to morning class, and 70 to the evening class. The return was completed by Robt. Thatcher, its Minister, of "Frampton Cotterell, Nr. Bristol".

According to Kelly's Directory of 1923, it was founded in 1795, although by then, according to Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses, Gloucestershire (1986) it had been replaced by a later building to the north, the present day Zion United Chapel. The original building is described as "a plain building with rendered walls and pantiled roof, much altered c.1840, and in recent years". By OS 1920 1:2,500 it is marked as "Sunday "School", and in the present day it is the Church Hall. The burial ground was adjacent to it, and apparently contained several table-tops of the early 19th century, but according the Zion United Church website, it had become overgrown, and in 1985, Church Authorities removed the gravestones, and converted it into a Garden of Remembrance, at which time former headstones were preserved, and fixed against the west boundary wall.

It was one of two Nonconformist chapels in the parish in 1851. The other was called Frampton End Wesleyan Chapel in the return, with a congregation of Wesleyan Methodists. By the time of publication of Kelly's Directory of 1923, there were also United Methodist and Primitive Methodist Chapels.

As an aside, there is a return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/330/6/4/18) for Winterbourne parish of a meeting of "Independents or Congregationals", also completed by Robt. Thatcher of Frampton Cotterell, its Minister. Evidently meetings were held informally as there was no separate building, but within it there was seating for 50 persons, all free, and an estimated 25 attended afternoon service on March 30. However the meeting was presumably discontinued, as I have found no record of a separate Congregational Chapel in Winterbourne itself.

Denomination

Now or formerly Independent/Congregational.

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 ST6715881222. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Zion Chapel (now Zion Church Hall), Frampton Cotterell shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Frampton Cotterell 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 Frampton Cotterell, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• Information provided on the Zion United Church website. (verified 2013-05-07)

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.