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Cheltenham Chapel (now 'Jenner Gardens'),
St George's Square (Bowling Green),
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

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 1809, but we understand it was closed in 1987.

Built in 1808-9, to a design by local architect Edward Smith, it is reputedly Cheltenham's earliest surviving non-conformist chapel. The first Bethel Baptist Chapel, in Knapp Road, would have predated it, but this was demolished, and replaced with a new building in 1820 (the present Christadelphian Hall).

Cheltenham Chapel's graveyard was opened in 1810. It was closed order of the Home Secretary on 22nd October 1894, but a transcription of its MIs is available from Gloucestershire Family History Society.

The Chapel was built originally to provide extra accomodation for worship, as Cheltenham's existing churches and chapels were becoming overcrowded, and initially both Anglicans and Nonconformists shared the building. Its leading promoter was the well known evangelical preacher, Reverend Rowland Hill of Surrey Chapel in London. He was a friend of Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccination, who was living in Cheltenham at this time. Over the years, it has been used by Congregationalists, Presbyterians and the Salvation Army, but as alternative places of worship were built, congregations dwindled, and in 1987 it was converted for office use.

The area it was built on used to be gardens and a carriage turning-space belonging to Jenner's residence in St George's Place. The garden of St George's Square, on its other side, is now Cheltenham Bowling Green, created in 1923, as part of a Ministry of Labour job creation scheme for unemployed servicemen. [Sources: Cheltenham - Current and Former Places of Worship on Stuart Flight's "Glosgen" website, information plaques in the graveyard, and An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham]

Denomination

Now or formerly Independent/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 SO9468822651. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Cheltenham Chapel (now 'Jenner Gardens'), Cheltenham shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Cheltenham 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 Cheltenham, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• As well as offering the benefits of Membership, the Gloucestershire Family History Society (null) (verified 2018-11-09)
• Stuart Flight's webpages of Cheltenham - Current and Former Places of Worship (null) (verified 2018-11-08)
• Find the information referred to via the search interface to An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham (null) (verified 2018-11-11)

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.