Listed Building record MDO16162 - United Reformed Church, Church Street, Wareham

Nonconformist chapel founded in 1670, but largely rebuilt after the fire of 1762, then added to in 1860 and 1895. Stuccoed walls with a hipped tile roof.

The Presbyterian, subsequently Congregational, church, originated in the late 17th century. In 1672, the house of Dorothy, widow of Thomas Chaplyn, ejected minister at Wareham, was licensed as a meeting-house. The present site, formerly a garden, was acquired in 1694, and a new meeting house erected in 1747. The building ws destroyed, along with much of the town, in the great fire of 1762, and the existing structure dates from the subsequent rebuilding. In 1789, doctrinal differences led to secessionists founding a new chapel in West Street, and in 1828, Unitarians also split and formed a new society in South Street. The earlier seceders reunited with the parent body in 1849. The chapel has brick walls with some later rendering, and a hipped tile roof with verge of stone slates. The West front has three segmental-arched upper windows of circa 1830. The lower openings, now covered by a continuous porch of circa 1895, formerly comprised two doorways with outer porches and windows between. The east wall has a shallow gabled projection at the centre, of 1878, replacing two tall round-arched pulpit windows. The north and south walls are partly covered by wings added in 1860 and 1895. <1>

<1> Stell, C, 1991, An Inventory of Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses in South-West England, 131 (Monograph). SDO11597.

<2> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1486707 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

May 31 2023 2:12PM