Essex Street Chapel

Essex Street Chapel, also known as Essex Church, is a

The chapel was located just off the Strand, on a site formerly occupied by Essex House, London home of the Earl of Essex, hence the name of the street and the hall. It was about halfway between the City and Westminster, in the legal district of London. From the mid-18th century, some rooms within the former nobleman's palace were used as the auction room of an up-scale bookseller named Samuel Paterson.^[1] This was easily adapted into a simple meeting house, but within a few years there was enough of a congregation, and enough donations, to have a new edifice raised on the foundations of the old. This was completed by 1778, with financial support from Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer,^[2] founder of the Hellfire Club, and Thomas Brand Hollis, political radical.^[3] Another supporter and trustee was Samuel Heywood, the chief justice.^[4] Their building footprint is believed to include the Tudor chapel of Essex House.^[5] Not until 1860 did the chapel gain an organ.^[6]

History

Lindsey's beginnings

The first minister was

In the mid-1880s, Essex Hall was razed and recreated by the architectural firm of Chatfeild-Clarke, designed for mixed use: offices and meeting rooms, but also a bookshop and reading rooms, and a great hall seating 600. It was ready a year earlier than the Kensington church, and its dedication service in 1886 featured all the great and the good of British Unitarianism.^[12]

The space was hired out for concerts and public meetings; for many years the

Much of Essex Street was demolished by enemy action during the Blitz in 1944. Once the bombed ruins had been removed after the war, the site served as a car park. Eventually planning permission and funding were obtained, which allowed for the construction of purpose-built offices. "What seemed at first to be a complete disaster was presently recognized as a denominational challenge, and was taken up with energy and determination," wrote the architect, Kenneth S. Tayler, A.R.I.B.A.^[14] Aside from the Unitarian headquarter functions, about half of the building's space was allocated from the outset to be leased to other organisations, thus paying the bills. From the night of the Doodlebug raid until the completion of construction in 1958 – fourteen years—the work that normally took place in Essex Hall was displaced to some spare rooms at Dr Williams's Library in Gordon Square.^[15]

Current church

Essex Church is based at Notting Hill Gate in Kensington, West London, and runs a full programme of activities. It is led by Rev. Sarah Tinker, who gained her ministerial qualification at Unitarian College, Manchester, after a first career as a teacher.^[16]

List of ministers

• 1774, Theophilus Lindsey
• 1793, John Disney
• 1805, Thomas Belsham^[17]
• 1829, Thomas Madge^[18]
• 1859 to 1883, James Panton Ham

People associated

• Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, politician, was an early member of the congregation.^[19]
• George Brooksbank (died 1792), descendant of Stamp Brooksbank, Governor of the Bank of England, donated funds^[20]
• Samuel Shore (1738–1828), trustee of the chapel. Also vice-president of the Society for Constitutional Information.^[21]
• William Sturch, theological writer, was one of the original congregation.^[22]
• The young William Wilberforce.^[23]
• William Frend, who made contact there with Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestley.^[24]
• George Harris,^[25] (1794–1859), minister, controversialist and editor.
• William Smith, M.P., abolitionist, and grandfather of Florence Nightingale and Barbara Bodichon. It was largely through his efforts that the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 was passed, making it legal to practice Unitarianism.
• Henry Crabb Robinson, whose prolific diaries were bequeathed to Dr Williams's Library, the theological collection for Dissenters.
• Mary Hays,^[26] author and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft
• Samuel Carter, railway solicitor and MP^[27]
• Frederick Nettlefold, served as president of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and the Sunday School Association. He was connected by marriage to the chief architect of the 1886 Essex Hall, and made substantial donations.
• Nathaniel Bishop Harman, MA, MB, FRCS, ophthalmologist, author of Science and Religion, father of writer
  Lady Rachel Billington, and Thomas Pakenham
  .
• Rupert Potter, son of industrialist and social reformer Edmund Potter, and father of author and conservationist Beatrix Potter.

Notes