Chapel in the Garden, Bridport

The Chapel in the Garden is a Grade II* Unitarian chapel at 49 East Street, Bridport, a late Georgian meeting house still used for worship, with a garden setting behind the street front.

Overview

Historic England lists the Unitarian Chapel (list entry 1324052, designated 28 November 1950) as a building of 1794: colour-washed brick under a hipped slate roof, of two storeys, with a band lettered “Unitarian Chapel”, moulded eaves cornice, three ranges of round-arched sashes, and a doorway with oblong fanlight under a semi-circular bowed portico on Ionic columns with a full entablature. The elevation to Rax Lane was built as a school in 1840, of three storeys with casements and ornamental iron grilles to some ground-floor windows.

The interior has galleries on three sides carried on columns with high bases, marbled shafts and Composite capitals, a full entablature with dentilled cornice, and ornamental iron balustrades at the gallery corners. The pulpit has fluted corner pilasters; the steps and communion rail are mid-nineteenth-century. The congregation’s own history records an independent meeting after the 1672 Great Ejection and a later New Meeting on this site, replacing an earlier meeting off Barrack Street. Listing NGR is SY 46789 92961.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1324052
• The Chapel in the Garden