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The Particular Baptist Church, which it is thought was formed in 1721, has occupied the site on Church Street since at least 1764. In 1725 a newly built house in Tetbury was registered for Baptist use. In the 1735 religious census 38 people were meeting regularly. Over 200 were meeting in the religious census of 1851 but by the 1970s the congregation tended to number no more than 12.
In the boundary of the Church Street property are two confronting buildings, being the present chapel and an earlier building thought to have been its predecessor. The earliest building was built of rubble with a stone slate roof, with two gables at the front, in each of which there is a small attic window. Below these, larger windows have been inserted, comprising round arched heads of bricks and keystones. The doorway is of a similar date and style, and is positioned between the two windows. The present chapel, built of stone with a hipped stone slate roof is thought to be as late as 1800. The frontage has two doorways and three upper windows, again round-arched but with stone heads and keystones. The interior has an L shaped gallery.
Strict Baptists or Calvanists were established in the town by the 1860s and built a chapel on The Green in 1872. When this sect disbanded in the 1940s the chapel was eventually used by the Roman Catholics.
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Location of chapel c.1899 |
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MINISTERS
Nathaniel Overbury 1751 J Burchell Rev Joseph Burchell George Davies 1851 Rev I Keddle George Morgan 1861 Rev Thomas Jones Thomas Williams 1871 Rev Robert Bray 1881 Rev T Napolean Smith Thomas Brain 1901
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Particular Baptists chapel location c.1899, later St Michael's RC church. |
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Passageway at the bottom left of photograph, leading through from Church Street to the Chapel, still leads through to Close Gardens and the Library. |
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rear of chapel showing memorial stones to the Overbury family & Annie Marie Williams, daughter of Rev.Williams.
Photo © Lynne Cleaver 2004 |
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page sources & resources: Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses, Gloucestershire. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England. 1986.ISBN 0 11 300008 1 VCH: Gloucestershire Vol.11 – available online at www.british-history.ac.uk Images of England: www.imagesofengland.org.uk
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