Guyhirn Chapel
Guyhirn Chapel
Guyhirn Chapel of Ease is a Grade II* redundant chapel on High Road, Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire, a rare unaltered Commonwealth meeting house now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.
- Location
- Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Cambridgeshire
- City / town
- Guyhirn
- Address
- High Road, Guyhirn, Cambridgeshire, PE13 4ED
- Postcode
- PE13 4ED
- Built
- 1660, replacing a medieval church in the village
- Denomination
- Churches Conservation Trust
- Grade
- II*
- Style
- Commonwealth Puritan chapel
- Materials
- Limestone ashlar with some reused stone; brick to west and north walls; pantiled roof
- Grid reference
- TF 403 040
- Opening hours
- Open by arrangement.
- Access
- Accessible toilets nearby. Level access to the main areas
Overview
Historic England lists the Chapel of Ease (formerly the Old Church), dated 1660 on the lintel over the doorway, replacing a medieval church in the village. The fabric is limestone ashlar with some reused, possibly medieval, stone in the west buttress and plinth; brick to the west and north walls; and a pantiled roof with an open timber bellcote on the west gable. The plan is rectangular. Windows are of four plain round-headed lights: one in the west gable, two in the south wall and one each to east and north. A segmental-arched doorway sits at the west end of the south wall. Listing NGR is TF 40312 04018.
The interior retains original seventeenth-century stall pews and hat pegs. Part of an octagonal two-tier panelled pulpit survives on a modern base. The ceiling is plastered. The listing describes the chapel as an important example of ecclesiastical building during the Commonwealth and notes an association with the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Culimites, whose leader David Culy is believed to have preached there. A Churches Conservation Trust guide records the date stone with the initials “RP” and that the land had belonged to Thomas Parke of Wisbech before passing to Peterhouse, Cambridge.