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Naunton Baptist Chapel,
Naunton Village Street,
Naunton, 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 1737, but we understand it was closed in 2014.

Naunton Baptist Chapel is a Grade II Listed Building - see the British Listed Buildings website for details.

It is a large building, with its north wall lying parallel to the street. The ground then falls away steeply to the south, allowing it to have a basement. The entrance is at the west end, through an arched gateway from the street. There is a school house attached to the east, and inside are blocked openings above east doorways, which school children or the choir may have used. There are 2 Tudor arched doorways at the west end which are also blocked.

According to Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses, Gloucestershire (1986), there is a monument inside the chapel to Robert Rowlands (1851), and his widow Hannah (1874), 'the only members who assisted in building the old chapel about the year 1798 that lived to see the new one opened for public worship in 1850'. There is an extensive burial ground outside to the west and south.

In fact the chapel Robert Rowlands and his wife assisted in building would have been to accomodate an already well established congregation. A History of Naunton Chapel, on the former website of Naunton and Guiting Power Baptist Church (www.ngbc.org.uk) described how in 1735, a diocesan survey recorded 3 baptist families in Naunton, and in 1737, a Baptist named Joseph Hitchman was preaching "in the open air or, more probably, in a cottage", and "Robert Rake Rowlands and his wife Mary were baptised in the river [16 yards] below the bridge".

The Chapel's registration for marriages was cancelled in March 2014, and it is now closed, as is its "daughter" Guiting Power Baptist Chapel.

Denomination

Now or formerly 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 SP1140423419. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• Naunton Baptist Chapel, Naunton shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Naunton 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 Naunton, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

• Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
• See Guiting Power Baptist Chapel elsewhere in this database.

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.