Essex Street Chapel and Hall, the since-demolished first Unitarian church building in England
Essex Street Chapel, also known asEssex Church, is aUnitarian place of worship in London. It was the first church in England set up withthis doctrine, and was established whenDissenters still faced legal threat. As the birthplace of British Unitarianism, Essex Street has particularly been associated with social reformers and theologians. The congregation moved west in the 19th century, allowing the building to be turned into the headquarters for theBritish and Foreign Unitarian Association and theSunday School Association. These evolved into theGeneral Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, theumbrella organisation for British Unitarianism, which is still based on the same site, in an office building calledEssex Hall. This article deals with the buildings (1778, 1887, 1958), the history, and the current church, based inKensington.
The chapel was located just offthe Strand, on a site formerly occupied byEssex House, London home of theEarl of Essex, hence the name of thestreet and the hall. It was about halfway betweenthe City andWestminster, in thelegal 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 namedSamuel Paterson.[1] This was easily adapted into a simplemeeting 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 fromFrancis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer,[2] founder of theHellfire Club, andThomas Brand Hollis, political radical.[3] Another supporter and trustee wasSamuel 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]
The first minister wasTheophilus Lindsey, who had recently left theChurch of England because of his burgeoning Unitarian conviction. He had moved to London specifically to find like-minded people and to found a congregation—indeed, adenomination. Support was immediately given him by distinguishedEnglish Presbyterian ministers such asRichard Price, who hadhis own church in Newington Green, andJoseph Priestley, who among other things discovered oxygen.Unitarian beliefs were against the law until theDoctrine of the Trinity Act 1813, but legal difficulties with the authorities were overcome with the help of barristerJohn Lee, who later became Attorney-General. The inaugural service, on 17 April 1774, was reviewed as far afield asLeeds: "The congregation was respectable and numerous, and seemed to be particularly pleased with the spirit of moderation, candour and christian benevolence of the preacher whose sermon was perfectly well adapted to the occasion."[7] Two hundred people gathered to hear Lindsey preach, includingBenjamin Franklin, then anagent for thecolonialProvince of Massachusetts Bay. This was the first time in England that a church had formed around explicitly Unitarian beliefs.[8]
By the 1880s demographic change, mainly the movement of population out of the very centre of London, meant that membership had fallen significantly. As long ago as 1867, RevRobert Spears had led the formation of a Unitarian congregation a couple of miles to the west; this group had grown and moved several times, but had no home.Sir James Clarke Lawrence,Lord Mayor of London andLiberalMP, purchased and donated some land at Kensington Gravel Pits (now Palace Gardens Terrace), and a temporarycorrugated iron church had been built. Meanwhile, the main Unitarian bodies, theBritish and Foreign Unitarian Association and theSunday School Association, needed better offices. Eventually it was decided that they would get the Essex Street building to redevelop, and the chapel would move to join the Kensington congregation, taking with it enough money to build a splendid new church in place of the iron one.[9]
This duly opened in 1887, under the name of Essex Church, serving the area of Kensington.[10] Gradually the building deteriorated:air pollution attacked the stone (the effect of decades of"pea-soupers", before the passage of theClean Air Act 1956), the steeple was removed as dangerous in 1960, the roof was shattered byblue ice from an aircraft in 1971, and by the 1970s the whole fabric had become run down. It was demolished and replaced with a modern church, with ancillary facilities. The first service was held in July 1977.[11]
Essex Hall, Essex StreetLondon County Council plaque on Essex Hall
In the mid-1880s, Essex Hall was razed and recreated by the architectural firm ofChatfeild-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 theFabian Society met there, for example, and theChristadelphians held their AGM at Essex Hall. Public meetings could become heated: when the AmericanProhibitionistWilliam "Pussyfoot" Johnson spoke at Essex Hall in 1919, he was abducted by medical students, and, off the premises, blinded by a missile. The house adjacent, number 1 Essex Street, had been donated to the trustees of the Essex Hall construction scheme, but the architects chose not to use it; duringWorld War I it was turned into "a modest hostel for soldiers and sailors, without distinction of sect or creed, passing through or making short stays in London". In 1925 some alterations were made to Essex Hall to enable the Lyndsey Press to begin well. From 1928 the main body of British Unitarianism was theGeneral Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches or GA, subsuming the previous organisations but continuing to operate from Essex Hall.[13]
Much of Essex Street was demolished by enemy action duringthe 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 theDoodlebug 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 atDr Williams's Library inGordon Square.[15]
Essex Church, known locally as Kensington Unitarians, is based atNotting Hill Gate inKensington, WestLondon, and runs a full programme of Sunday worship and small group ministry.[16] It is currently led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall, who gained her ministerial qualification at Unitarian College, after a first career in the field of medical imaging and radiological sciences.[17]
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.
^'The village centres around St. Mary Abbots church and Notting Hill Gate', Survey of London: volume 37: Northern Kensington (1973), pp. 25–41. URL:http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49864 Date accessed: 19 January 2011
