Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
| Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church | |
|
Bloomsbury, Middlesex | |
|---|---|
 Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church | |
| Baptist | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ30078139 |
| Location: | 51°30’59"N, 0°7’37"W |
| Address: | 235 Shaftesbury Avenue |
| History | |
| Built 1848 | |
| Early Italian Gothic | |
| Information | |
| Website: | bloomsbury.org.uk |
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church stands on Shaftesbury Avenue in Bloomsbury, in Middlesex. It is a large, early Victorian church, and a Grade II listed building.[1]
The church built in 1848, to the design of John Gibson, opening in December of that year as 'Bloomsbury Chapel'. It was funded by the generosity of Samuel Morton Peto, who had been blessed with a fortune derived from railway building. The first minister here was William Brock: in his obituary in 1875, the Bloomsbury Chapel was described as ‘a bold experiment’.[2]
London at the time was a ripe mission field for the Baptists: it was an unsettled time: 1848 saw revolutions in Europe and Chartism on the rise, and the first electric light in London, as slum clearance was achieving improvements. The 1851 census was to show there were as many non-conformists in England as Anglicans, but London was still to be won.
The new church was built in the social divide – standing between the slums on one side and the airy squares of Bloomsbury on the other.
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1271628: Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church (Grade II listing)
- ↑ 'The Freeman', 19 November 1875, obituary for William Brock
- Bowers, Faith: 'A Bold Experiment the definitive history 1848-1999' (1999)