Old Meeting, Tadley
Old Meeting, Tadley
The Old Meeting on Malthouse Lane, Tadley, is a Grade II listed United Reformed church, a house-like Nonconformist chapel enlarged in stages from the eighteenth century.
- Location
- Tadley, Hampshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Hampshire
- City / town
- Tadley
- Address
- Malthouse Lane, Tadley, Hampshire, RG26 3NY
- Postcode
- RG26 3NY
- Built
- Eighteenth century; enlarged 1828; Sunday school 1862
- Denomination
- United Reformed Church
- Grade
- II
- Style
- Nonconformist meeting house
- Materials
- Brick and rendered walls; half-hipped tile roof to the oldest block, slate to the 1828 extension
- Grid reference
- SU 605 608
- Opening hours
- Open by arrangement.
- Access
- Level access to the main areas. Accessible toilets nearby
Overview
Historic England lists Tadley United Reformed Church as an eighteenth-, early nineteenth-, mid-nineteenth- and twentieth-century building. The oldest, largest unit is a rectangular block with a half-hipped tile roof, brick and rendered walls, mullioned and transomed windows, and a plain modern gabled porch. An 1828 extension with a slate roof and two arched windows was opened through to the older block as a single interior. A lower brick and tile Sunday school of 1862 stands at the west end. Inside, a gallery with a panelled front runs on three sides, extended in 1828 when the intervening wall was removed and the valley supported on two columns.
Tadley and District History Society records that after the Restoration, ejected clergy preached to Nonconformist groups in Tadley. Meetings began in a cottage in Church Road; by 1718 a meeting house had been built in Doe’s Lane (now part of Malthouse Lane). The 1828 enlargement added about a hundred hearers. An annex served as Tadley’s first British School, established about 1842. The congregation became United Reformed in 1972. An adjacent churchyard remains in use.