Default Image Place of Worship has been
Demolished.
Image by courtesy of
openclipart.org

Gideon Chapel (Demolished),
Newfoundland Street,
St Paul, Bristol, 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 1819, but we understand it was closed in 1930.

Gideon Chapel was on, or near to the site of what now is Newfoundland Road Police Station. It was on the opposite side of the road to St Clement's Church.

John Latimer, in his The Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (1887) reports that the Rev. George Müller, and his friend Henry Craik, whom he'd met whilst recuperating in Devon after a serious illness, were ministers of the chapel, after Müller's arrival in Bristol in 1832. Müller subsequently founded Bristol's Ashley Down Orphanage, and was also the founder of other worthy causes. He was born at Kroppenstedt, in the Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany), and is buried in Arnos Vale Cemetery, in Bristol.

There are church records covering the period 1822-1929. The following notice appeared in The London Gazette of 17th October 1930 (p.6337) recorded its formal closure:

NOTICE is hereby given that the Building formerly known as GIDEON CHAPEL, situated at Newfoundland-street, in the civil parish of Bristol, in the registration district of Bristol, in the county borough of Bristol, which was duly registered for marriages, pursuant to the Act of 6 & 7, Will. IV, c.85, is now no longer used as a Place of Meeting for religious worship by the congregation on whose behalf it was so registered, and that the registry thereof was therefore on the 11th day of October, 1930, formally cancelled by the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages for England and Wales. Dated 13th October, 1930.

The original registration was recorded in the Gazette of 14th July 1837 (p.1800).

Denomination

Now or formerly 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 ST5964073685. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Gideon Chapel (Demolished), St Paul, Bristol shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Bristol 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 St Paul, Bristol, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• Notices of Civil Registration of Places of Worship for marriages are published in the London edition of The Gazette. Hint: search for registrations from 1998 by choosing 'Church' notices, and the option 'Registration for solemnising marriage'. (verified 2018-12-11)

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.