Toxteth Unitarian Chapel

The Unitarian Chapel of Toxteth (English Toxteth Unitarian Chapel, also known as Ancient Chapel, " old chapel ") is a church in Park Lane in Toxteth, a suburb of the English city of Liverpool.

History

In Toxteth, previously a royal enclosure, had settled in 1600 increased Puritan families from the area around Bolton, probably because they, unlike within the city boundaries of Liverpool could not be forced here to attend services of the official church- Anglican communities. After the Puritan settlers had first established a school in 1611, they decided to build a place of worship and the formal establishment of a parish. To the pastor chose the parishioners Richard Mather, who had previously directed the school and had then taken a degree at Oxford in 1617, but abandoned this after the call from Toxteth. The first sermon in the finished chapel Mather held on 30 November 1618th Mather emigrated as a result of the increasing persecution of the Puritans under Charles I. to New England from the remaining community held its meetings in secret from.

After the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 the Puritans in Toxteth as in the whole of England were again exposed to persecution under the Clarendon Code. The two community leaders from Toxteteh at this time, the Presbyterian Thomas Crompton and Michael Briscoe were even taken between time in prison, but could the town Toxteth specific protection by the influential Catholic noble family Molyneux delight which owned the site of the church and received appreciation by Puritans who lived within the city limits of Liverpool. As a free church congregations were also approved in Liverpool itself as a result of the Declaration of Indulgence, Toxteth but lost much of his former parishioners, the chapel fell into disrepair in the 18th century rapidly. To 1774, the building was renovated, however. The community turned this time mostly to Unitarian doctrines. 1820, the church was enlarged by an extension that demolished the adjacent old school and community halls, 1930, erected in its place a creche.

The chapel is quite simple two-storey stone building with a slate covered pitched roof on the south side is a small octagonal lantern mounted. The layout was originally rectangular, with the tags 1774, the hall was extended by a growing and also built out a narrower and deeper portal with its own gable and two round-arched entrance doors. Inside, the original furniture including pews and paneled altar from the early 17th century has been preserved quite unchanged. Since 1952, the building is a testimony Puritan church architecture, run as a Grade I Listed Building, so in the highest category of the English heritage protection.

As a 1852 panel mounted in the interior of the chapel noted, grew up in Toxteth astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks was (still here in the case Horrox ) buried on the grounds of the church. The exact location of his grave is unknown.