Acre Street Chapel, Stroud, Gloucestershire, Church History

Gloucestershire Places of Worship

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Above Photograph(s)
Copyright of John Williams

Acre Street Chapel, Stroud

Acre Street Chapel,
Acre Street,
Stroud, 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 1763, but we understand it was closed in 1876.

Built in 1763, for "a society which had earlier suffered from internal dissensions" who had recovered sufficiently to build what is now the oldest surviving octagonal chapel.
Originally the building was a regular octagon, but in 1796 the sides were doubled in length, and one end of it rebuilt. Other extensions have also been added over the years.
Wesley preached here on 18th March 1765, "to an overflowing congregation". An octagonal plan was apparently favoured by Wesley to whom it "represented the most extreme manifestation of the importance of the sermon and the centrality of the word in the Methodist tradition".
The interior has a gallery around five sides supported by timber columns supported by Roman Doric capitals.
It was closed for Methodist worship in 1876, to be superseded by the newly built Methodist Church in Castle Street; then in 1878 it was taken over by the Salvation Army, who still occupy the premises today. [Sources: Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses, Gloucestershire (1986), <Stroud Genealogy on Stuart Flight's "Glosgen" website, and the British Listed Buildings website]

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 SO8544805134. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

Acre Street Chapel, Stroud shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Stroud 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 Stroud, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Stuart Flight's webpages of <Stroud Genealogy (null) (verified 2018-11-08)
Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)

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.

Information last updated on 8 Nov 2018 at 17:12.

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Photo	Place or OS GridRef	Dedication (optional)	Street (optional)	How Many	Denomination

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You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

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This Report was created 22 Dec 2024 - 12:18:01 GMT from information held in the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 13 Oct 2021 at 14:13.

URL of this page: https://churchdb.gukutils.org.uk/GLS842.php

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