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

Bridge Street Chapel (Demolished),
Bridge Street,
Bristol, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

We don't know whether 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 1786, but we understand it was closed in 1868.

The origins of Bridge Street Chapel can best be described by John Latimer, in his Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (1887) in which he says that its congregation could trace its existence to 1682 [or 1672, according to Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses, Gloucestershire (1986)], when a licence was granted by Charles II. to John Weeks to preach in a room in St James's Back. The congregation subsequently removed to a building erected for a theatre in Tucker Street; and when that was demolished for the construction of Bath Street in 1786, then to Bridge Street, where the basement of the chapel was leased to a wine merchant for cellarage - "a spirit above and a spirit below... above, the Spirit Divine, and below is the spirit of wine".

Over a century later, it was one of the early registrations of places of worship under the Marriage Act of 1836, as the following notice in The London Gazette of 4th August 1837 (p.2046) indicates:

NOTICE is hereby given, that a separate building, named Bridge-street Chapel, situated at Bridge-street, in the parish of Saint Mary-le-port, in the borough of the city and county of Bristol, in the district of Bristol, being a building certified according to law as a place of religious worship, was, on the 31st day of July 1837, duly registered for solemnizing marriages therein, pursuant to the Act of 6th and 7th William 4, chap. 85.. Dated 2nd August 1837.

The congregation removed from Bridge Street when a new Chapel was built for them, on Clifton Down, in 1868. Bridge Street was once a thriving shopping centre, but is now long gone, a casualty of WWII; there is, however, is a sketch of the Chapel in the Loxton Collection in the Bristol Reference Library (E486), for which see Bristol - Pinpoint Local Information. The sketch shows a building of 2 storeys, and 3 bays. There are two round-arched doorways at ground level, above which is a row of evenly spaced "rose" windows. Above this is the upper storey, which has a lancet window in each bay. A corner of St Mary le Port graveyard is shown in the bottom right hand corner of the sketch.

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 ST5901073009. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Bridge Street Chapel (Demolished), 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 Bristol, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• The “Google Maps Experience” for the past - Bristol - Pinpoint Local Information (null) (verified 2018-11-11)
• 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.