Bridport United Church
Bridport United Church
Bridport United Church is a Grade II Gothic Revival chapel on East Street, Bridport, Dorset: built as a Congregational (Independent) chapel and since 1971–72 a Local Ecumenical Partnership of Methodist and United Reformed congregations.
- Location
- Bridport , Dorset
- Country
- England
- County
- Dorset
- City / town
- Bridport
- Address
- East Street, Bridport, Dorset, N17 9PR
- Postcode
- N17 9PR
- Built
- 1859; opened 1860 as Independent Chapel
- Architect
- Poulton and Woodman of Reading
- Denomination
- Local Ecumenical Partnership
- Grade
- II
- Style
- Gothic Revival
- Materials
- Hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings; Powerstock rubble limestone with Bath stone dressings
- Grid reference
- SY 467 928
- Opening hours
- Wednesday coffee morning 10am to 12 noon and open by prior arrangement.
- Access
- Accessible toilets nearby. Level access to the main areas
- Website
- https://www.buc.cool/
Overview
Historic England lists the United Reformed and Methodist Church of 1859 by Poulton and Woodman of Reading. The fabric is hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings and a pitched roof. A nave and two aisles are expressed on the west front by buttresses crowned with octagonal spirelets. A large five-light grouped lancet has reticulated tracery; a pointed arch in the gable has Geometrical tracery. Steep-roofed porches serve each aisle. The interior has an open hammerbeam timber roof on foliate corbels, galleries on three sides on twisted iron columns, and a rib-vaulted apse. The listing records an early seventeenth-century polygonal pulpit with two tiers of arcading, originally from Charmouth, from which John Wesley’s great-grandfather is said to have preached while Charles II waited for a ship in 1651. The church’s own site dates the building to 1860 and records the 1972 union of Bridport URC and Methodist churches. The chapel replaced an earlier Independent chapel in Barrack Street.
Wednesday coffee mornings are held 10am to noon; other visits are by arrangement.