Christ Church Unitarian Chapel

Christ Church Unitarian Chapel, Dampiet Street, Bridgwater

This is a Unitarian chapel, originally dating from 1688 and rebuilt in 1788. It is constructed of Flemish bond brick with stone coping, cornice, open bracketed and dentilled pediment, plaques, architraves and cill band. The roof is pantile.

The building is rectangular in plan with a late 19th-century schoolroom added to the rear right. It rises two storeys with a symmetrical three-window facade. The windows have plain architraves with bead edges and late 19th-century leaded lights with narrow margin panes. The facade is set back approximately one metre from the adjacent buildings and built higher than the gable behind it. A stone-flagged forecourt in front bears traces of former railings.

The central bay projects slightly forward beneath the open pediment and contains two date plaques in the tympanum. Above these is a Venetian window on the first floor, topped by a handsome shell hood (probably from the late 17th-century building), and 20th-century three-panel double doors below. The flanking bays each have a short returned cornice to either side of the pediment, from which high parapet walls sweep down to meet forward-projecting walls that flank the forecourt. These bays contain two-light casement windows to the first floor and fixed lights of the same width to the ground floor.

Interior: The interior is predominantly of 1788 character but was re-floored and reglazed in the late 19th century and has been recently restored. The doors are panelled on the outside with diagonal planking to the back, full-width hinges and fine wrought-iron bolts to top and bottom.

The floor of the entrance hall and chapel comprises late 19th-century polychromatic tiles with an elaborate pierced cast-iron continuous heating vent running along the aisles. Four full-height stone Tuscan columns with fluted capitals support the flat-ceilinged aisles and barrel-vaulted nave. The aisles have dentilled moulding to the frames of a tripartite skylight of four panes to the centre and simple guttae cornice. The nave contains several pierced ceiling roses, some for ventilation and some that formerly held pendant gas lights.

A singers' gallery against the front wall is supported by cast-iron Tuscan columns with fluted capitals and panelled front. A late 19th-century organ stands on the ground to the centre, opposite the door.

The chapel contains a complete range of late 19th-century box pews with reset 18th-century panelling featuring raised-and-fielded panels and raised H hinges. The doors open flat to allow passage down the aisles and are marked with elaborate Roman numerals in gold leaf. The pews in the aisles are higher and probably date from the late 18th century.

The small pulpit at the rear centre is virtually an elaborate single box pew on a stone plinth, raised on a dais of three steps. It has pyramidal panelling to the front, large scrolls to the side of the seat and a knob to the right by which the preacher could control the gas lighting of the whole chapel.

The late 19th-century schoolroom to the rear right has a queen-post roof and tongued-and-grooved planked panelling below a high dado rail.

Historical associations: A painted panel outside to the right of the door claims this to be the oldest non-conformist chapel in Bridgwater, stating "This congregation was founded by Admiral Blake's friends and associates when the Rev. John Norman, his former protégé, was ejected from the parish church in 1662, after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660." The chapel was sacked by the authorities in 1663 and its contents burned on the Cornhill.

A bronze plaque to the left of the door records that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge preached in this church on Sunday 4th June 1797 and Sunday 7th January 1798.

Wall tablets from the 18th and 19th centuries include one to George Lewis Browne, who brought Nelson's body back to England. It reads: "Captain Browne obtained the trust and highest commendation of Admiral Lord Nelson under whose immediate command he distinguished himself at the Battle of Trafalgar."