Gloucestershire Places of Worship

We have 1 Image Barton Street Baptist Chapel, Tewkesbury (86k) Above Photograph(s)
Copyright of Rosemary Lockie
Barton Street Baptist Chapel, Tewkesbury
Barton Street Baptist Chapel,
Barton Street,
Tewkesbury, 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 1805, but we understand it was closed in 1984.

This building superseded the Old Baptist Chapel in Old Chapel Court (off Church Street). According to Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses, Gloucestershire (1986), it stands concealed behind other buildings on the south side of Barton Street, has a plain front, with "brick dentil eaves cornice and two round-arched windows formerly with doorways below but altered in the mid-19th century and a central doorway inserted re-using an original canopy on shaped brackets".

The return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/345/3/6/35) describes a separate building, erected in "1804 or 1805", used exclusively as a place of worship by a Particular Baptist congregation. It had free sittings for 250, and 260 "other" sittings; and its estimated congregation on March 30th was 320 in the morning, 40 in the afternoon, and 350 in the evening. There was no mention of Sunday Scholars, so presumably it had no Sunday School. The return was completed by Joseph Potter, a Deacon, who gave his address as 67 Barton Street, Tewkesbury.

The Victoria County History series: A History of the County of Gloucester, Volume 8: Cleeve, Deerhurst and Tibblestone, and the lower divisions of Tewkesbury and Westminster (1968), pp.154-165 (The borough of Tewkesbury: Churches) records that it stands (or stood) in a small burial ground, had a gallery that ran round three sides.

They also record that it was registered for marriages in 1838, the first marriage taking place in 1840. According to the present day Tewkesbury Baptist Church website, it was closed in 1984; though its registration for marriages was not cancelled until its replacement was itself registered. This is confirmed in the following notice in The London Gazette of 4th September 1987 (p.11126):

The Registrar General, being satisfied that BAPTIST CHAPEL, Barton Street, Tewkesbury, in the registration district of Cheltenham in the Non-Metropolitan County of Gloucestershire is no longer used as a place of worship by the congregation on whose behalf it was on 19th December 1838 registered for marriages in accordance with the Marriage Act 1836, has cancelled the registration. Dated 19th August 1987.

So far as I can tell from Old, and present day Maps, it stood quite a long way back from Barton Street, backing onto Swilgate Road, where today, a block of apartments called "Chapel House", has been erected.

Denomination

Now or formerly Particular Baptist.

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 SO8935432619. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

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 Tewkesbury, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

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 23 Jan 2019 at 14:56.

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This Report was created 10 Oct 2024 - 21:59:48 BST 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/GLS863.php
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