We have 5 Images Above Photograph(s)
Copyright of John Williams/Phil Draper

St John the Baptist's Church,
Northgate Street / St John's Lane, GL1 2AN,
Gloucester, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Church 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 931, but we understand it was closed in 1994.

A church on this site is believed to have existed as early as AD 931, said to be founded by King Athelstan; this was however rebuilt in the 11th century and was then dedicated to St John the Baptist. The bulk of the present building however dates from 1732, though the 14th century tower and spire, which belonged to the earlier building were retained.

According to a document Religious Heritage (in 2010) on Gloucester City Council website "no less than seven Mayors of Gloucester are buried here, but the pulpit is all that remains of the original 'three-decker' from which both George Whitefield and John Wesley are known to have preached".

This is also the church of Thomas STOCK, who was an early pioneer of Sunday School education. Robert RAIKES was to popularise the movement, but a number of schools existed, including ones founded by STOCK, before RAIKES became involved.

In 1972 under a sharing agreement with Methodists, the Anglican congregation were joined with that of Northgate Methodist Chapel, and it was renamed "St John Northgate". By 1994, however the Church of England decided it no longer needed the building, so today, although the CofE retains ownership, methodists have had its sole use since then. The Northgate Chapel was subsequently demolished, and a supermarket built in its site.

The second of our photographs shows the top portion of the spire, which was removed from the church in 1910, and placed in St Lucy's Gardens, behind St John's Church Hall in Hare Lane.

The third photograph shows St John's Church Hall, which has been built on top of the old St John's burial ground. When the burial ground was cleared, the remains were reinterred in the Old Gloucester Cemetery ("B Ground") on Tredworth Road.

The fourth image is an illustration of St John the Baptist's Church, with the spire intact, taken from An Original History of the City of Gloucester, by Revd. Thomas Dudley Fosbrooke (1819). It is interesting to compare the scale with what remains attached to the church today, and the portion preserved in St Lucy's Gardens, and to observe how little the front has changed.

See also St John Northgate own entry in the Database. Other sources of information, used in compiling this account are John Williams, City of Gloucester Places of Worship on Stuart Flight's "Glosgen" website, and a document St John's Northgate Methodist Church, available in 2011 on a website for the Methodist City Centre Network, now part of the Methodist Church in Britain website.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

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 SO8324918675. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• St John the Baptist's Church, Gloucester shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Gloucester 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 Gloucester, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• The Local Government website of Gloucester City Council (null) (verified 2018-11-09)
• See St John Northgate elsewhere in this database.
• Stuart Flight's webpages of City of Gloucester Places of Worship (null) (verified 2018-11-08)
• “The mother church to Methodists worldwide” - the Methodist Church in Britain (null) (verified 2018-10-10)

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.