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

Filton Wesleyan Chapel (Demolished),
Church Road,
Filton, 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 1833, but we understand it was closed in 1927.

Phil Draper's ChurchCrawler website records Filton's first Methodist Chapel as dating from the early 1850s. In fact a return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/339/6/4/13) records a place of meeting for Wesleyan Methodists as first built in 1833. It was a separate building, used exclusively as a place of worship, with free seating for 100, and 20 "other" sittings. The estimated congregation on March 30th was 40 to evening service only, and the return was completed by John Holder, its Steward, who lived in "Fylton near Bristol, Gloucestershire". He remarked that it was "A Comfortable Chapel the Gift of the Late Mr. Stratton of Bristol ... Praise the Lord".

The building as shown on the first available Map, of 1882 was rectangular, on the south side of Church Road. It was next door to a Reading Room, on the south-west corner of the junction of Church Road with Station Road. It looks quite large, so perhaps it was a post-1851 replacement for the earlier building, and indeed this appears to be so. The leaflet South Gloucestershire Extensive Urban Survey Archaeological Assessment Report - Filton (PTE070183.pdf.pdf) available (in 2014) on South Gloucestershire Council website records it as dating from 1852 - built "probably on land forming part of Church Farm... It was built of rendered local limestone with a slate roof and a small porch"

It was closed when a new building was erected in Gloucester Road North in 1925, and by Maps of 1935-1938, it is labelled as a Hall - the above leaflet says it was used as a Sunday School between 1946 and 1953, and in 1963 demolished. Its site is now occupied by shops and apartment blocks.

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 ST6040879186. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Filton Wesleyan Chapel (Demolished), Filton shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Filton 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 Filton, 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)
• The Local Government website of South Gloucestershire Council (null) (verified 2018-11-09)

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.