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Ebenezer Methodist Chapel (now Kings Court),
King Street, off Lower High Street,
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

We believe the Chapel 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 1813, but we understand it was closed after 1934.

This has been described as Cheltenham's first Wesleyan Chapel, though certainly not the first Methodist chapel, since a chapel in Albion Street, built in about 1723 is said to have been used by Methodists from 1764, and Meakings Place Chapel, build about 1730, has also been recorded as a place of Methodist worship. In fact, according to the document Cheltenham Borough Archaeological Assessments, compiled as part of the Gloucestershire Extensive Urban Survey (EUS) of 1995-8, Ebenezer Chapel was built for a Methodist congregation that had outgrown Meakings Place, which in 1824 was demolished to make way for Pittville Street.

The ground the Ebenezer Chapel was built on had belonged to the garden of a High Street pub, sold by W.H. Jessop. It was erected in 1812-13 at a cost of £2,424 to a design by Charles Williams. When the building was opened, it was described as an elegant pile ... with a circular gallery capable of containing 1000 auditors, and wholly spacious and tasteful. The chapel was occupied by Wesleyan Methodists until 1840, after which it passed to a group of Baptists who had seceded from Bethel Chapel, and then to Primitive Methodists, from 1859-1934.

It was restored, and converted into flats in the mid-1990s, and is now in residential occupation, known as 'Kings Court', the name by which it is also known by in the record of Listed Buildings ("Kings Court and Attached Gates") available online on the British Listed Buildings website. [Sources: Cheltenham - Current and Former Places of Worship on Stuart Flight's "Glosgen" website, and An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham]

Denomination

Now or formerly Wesleyan 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 Chapel was located at OS grid reference SO9454522845. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Ebenezer Methodist Chapel (now Kings Court), 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.

• Part of a national programme of surveys of England's historic towns and cities - Gloucestershire Extensive Urban Survey (EUS) (null) (verified 2018-11-11)
• Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
• 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.