Monica Wills Chapel (Private), Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, Church History

Gloucestershire Places of Worship

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Monica Wills Chapel (Private), Stoke Bishop

Monica Wills Chapel (Private),
Wills Hall, Parry's Lane, BS9 1AE,
Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

We believe the Chapel does 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 1930, and we understand it is still open.

The British Listed Buildings website records the Monica Wills Chapel as built around 1930 to a design by Sir George Oatley. It has an apsidal nave, north east vestry, and south chapel - "semicircular full-height apse with 2 buttresses capped by scrolled brackets ... 4-bay north elevation articulated at the east end, with two 10-light clerestory wheel windows above semicircular headed 2-light nave windows [and] similar south side".
It is situated in the grounds of Wills Hall - one of Bristol University's Halls of Residence, which was built on the site of Downside House. The Chapel was added in 1930 "as a place of Christian Worship for all students, especially those in the Stoke Bishop Halls of Residence". For more details, of the Hall see Wills Hall on Wikipedia, which mentions the Chapel has excellent acoustic.
The Chapel was the gift of Dame Monica Wills, the widow of Henry Herbert Wills (1856-1922). She also founded St Monica's Care Home, in Cote Lane in 1925, now managed by the St Monica Trust, and was created a Dame of the British Empire the same year. She was born as Mary Monica Cunliffe-Owen, and died in Bristol in 1931 at the age of 70. The Civil Registration of her marriage to Henry Herbert was at Kensington in June 1/4 1886.

Denomination

Now or formerly College Chapel.

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 is located at OS grid reference ST5690675717. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

Monica Wills Chapel (Private), Stoke Bishop shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Stoke Bishop 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 Stoke Bishop, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
A link to an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, on Wills Hall (null) (verified 2018-11-22)

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.

Information last updated on 23 Nov 2018 at 13:21.

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Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find places of worship in the present day.

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This Report was created 28 Nov 2024 - 22:32:12 GMT from information held in the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 13 Oct 2021 at 14:13.

URL of this page: https://churchdb.gukutils.org.uk/GLS1569.php

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