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

Victoria Mission Hall (Demolished),
Victoria Parade (formerly Victoria Road),
Redfield, 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 before 1902, but we understand it was closed by 1929.

To the best of my knowledge, the former Victoria Mission Hall is not shown on any Old Maps, but its listing in Kelly's Directories of Bristol of 1902 and 1914 indicates it was on the south-east corner of the junction of what was then Victoria Road (197 Church Road to Whitehall Road) with Mary Street. Both streets have since been renamed - to Victoria Parade, and Mary Court respectively, no doubt to avoid duplication with streets elsewhere in Bristol. Neither Directory provides any indication of the Mission's denomination in their Ecclesiastical section, listing it merely as a "Mission Room" in 1914 with services on Sundays at 11 and 6.30, and on Wednesdays at 8pm.

The 1914 Directory lists #2 Victoria Road as "St George's Hall Electric Palace", and #4 as The Equitable Loan & Discount Society, secretary A.W. Nurse, and also the residence of Thomas Green - followed by the entry "Victoria Road Mission". The 1902 entry is for just a Mission Hall. Curiously, the "Electric Palace" of 1914 is not shown on Old Maps, but in 1951, the building occupying the site of the Mission Hall, and surrounding buildings was labelled as the Granada Cinema.

The story behind the "Electric Palace", its takeover by the Pugsley family, their purchase of surrounding shops, and the building next door, "which had been a coffin storeroom owned by Osbourne's undertakers downstairs and the Victoria Road Mission upstairs" to make a larger cinema - by 1929 named the Granada - is told by Paul Townsend, in his Photographic Archive of Bristol's Lost Cinemas.

Curiously, the Mission Hall had been registered for marriages only 2 years previously, according to the following notice in The London Gazette of 14th June 1927 (p.3856):

A Separate Building, duly certified for religious worship, named VICTORIA MISSION HALL, situated at Victoria Parade, Redfield, in the civil parish of Bristol, in the county borough of Bristol, in Bristol registration district, was, on the 7th June, 1927, registered for solemnizing marriages therein, pursuant to 6 & 7 Wm. IV, c.85. Dated 8th June 1927.

Denomination

Now or formerly Mission Hall.

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 ST6151373540. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Victoria Mission Hall (Demolished), Redfield, 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 Redfield, Bristol, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• What can I say? Paul Townsend's collection of photographs, old and new, of Bristol is spectacular, focussing on his Photographic Archive of Bristol's Lost Cinemas (null) (verified 2018-11-13)
• 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.