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

Clowes Methodist Church (Demolished),
Summerhill Road / Air Balloon Road, BS5 8LB,
St George, Bristol, 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 1879, but we understand it was closed in 1988.

Clowes Methodist Church stood on the north side of the junction of Summerhill Road and Air Balloon Road. It is labelled as "Clowe's Chapel (Primitive Methodist) on Old Maps of 1888, and backed onto open fields. There were open fields to the south too, surrounding Troopershill Farm, and interestingly, this is still a "green" space, marked on Google Maps of 2014 as "the Farm Allotments".

There is a sketch of the church on Phil Draper's ChurchCrawler website, showing a large building with a 5-bay front, and two tiers of round-arched windows, having radial lights at the top, and the lower part divided into 12 lights. The centre 3 bays projected slightly and there were three doorway arches.

It was closed for worship in 1988, to be demolished, and replaced by the present Summerhill Methodist Church on the same site. Its formal closure was recorded the following year, in The London Gazette of 25th October 1989 (p.12261):

The Registrar General, being satisfied that St. George Methodist Church, Clouds Hill Road, St. George and Clowes Chapel, Summerhill, St. George in the registration district of Bristol in the Non-Metropolitan County of Avon are no longer used as places of worship by the congregation, on whose behalf they were registered for marriages in accordance with the Marriage Act, 1836 has cancelled the registration. Dated 4th October 1989.

William Clowes and Hugh Bourne were the co-founders of the Primitive Methodist movement in the early 19th century.

Denomination

Now or formerly Primitive 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 ST6304573463. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Clowes Methodist Church (Demolished), St George, 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 George, Bristol, 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.