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Eastville Methodist Church (now Pentecostal City Mission),
Fishponds Road / Gloucester Street,
Eastville, Fishponds, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

We believe the Church 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 1892, but we understand it was closed by 2000.

Phil Draper's account of United Free Methodist Churches on his ChurchCrawler website, we know that the foundations of Eastville Park Methodist Church were laid in early 1837, when property developer Thomas Slocombe added a mission room next to two new cottages he built in Freeland Buildings.

A new church was built in 1872 further along Fishponds Road, at its junction with Gloucester Street and Muller Road, with seating for 250. Extensions were built in 1879 and 1893, but the building was still too small, so in 1901-2 it was rebuilt "in a large gothic style" to a design by architect Henry M. Bennett.

The following notice in The London Gazette of 19th December 1902 (p.8772) recorded its registration for marriages:

A Separate Building, duly certified for religious worship, named UNITED METHODIST FREE CHURCH, situated at Eastville Park, Fishponds-road, in the civil parish of Bristol, in the county borough of Bristol, in Bristol registration district, was on the sixteenth December, 1902, registered for solemnizing marriages therein, pursuant to 6th and 7th Wm. IV, c.85. Dated 17th December 1902.

Its closure, as "Methodist Church, Eastville Park, Fishponds Road, Bristol" was recorded in The London Gazette of 18th May 2000 in a list of buildings which "are no longer used by the congregations on whose behalf they were registered for marriages"... Its former Methodist congregation have now moved to previously secular premises at 191-121 Fishponds Road, and this splendid building is now the home of the International Pentecostal City Mission.

Denomination

Now or formerly Free/United 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 Church was located at OS grid reference ST6147875114. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Eastville Methodist Church (now Pentecostal City Mission), Eastville, Fishponds shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Fishponds 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 Eastville, Fishponds, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• The Church officiando's “Bible” - Phil Draper's ChurchCrawler (null) (verified 2018-10-16)
• 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.