Patrick Comerford
Throughout this week, I have been blogging about a number of churches and chapels in Hampstead I have visited recently. They include Saint John-at-Hampstead, the ancient parish church on Church Row; Saint John’s Downshire Hill, the last remaining proprietary chapel within the Diocese of London; and Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel in Hampstead; as well as three former churches that have been closed and found new uses: Saint Stephen’s Church, considered the architectural masterpiece of SS Teulon; the former Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church with its unusual hexagonal shape and now one of the world’s largest recording rooms; and the former Trinity Presbyterian Church.
Heath Street Baptist Church was founded in Hampstead in 1861. It stands halfway between Hampstead High Street and Hampstead Heath, and is a minute’s walk from Hampstead Station. The church sees itself as a place of beauty, tranquillity and reality in the heart of busy London.
The first Baptist meetings in Hampstead are said to have started on Holly Bush Hill in 1811, when a room in George Hart’s house was registered for worship in 1816. The Revd James Castleden was invited to be the minister in 1817, and he remained until he died in 1854.
Castleden was a well-known preacher and a friend of both the Revd Thomas Ainger, the Church of England Vicar of Hampstead, and the Abbé Morel, the local Roman Catholic priest. Castleden erected a large building on Holly Bush Hill, later No 17 Holly Mount, with a residence on ground floor and Bethel Baptist chapel above.
Bethel Baptist Chapel opened in 1818 and membership quickly rose to 80. Bethel Baptist Chapel was a Strict Baptist chapel until 1825, when Castleden opened the communion service to all. This caused a number of members to leave, and seceders founded Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel at New End.
Bethel Chapel was described as solid and commodious, with galleries, but rather comfortless. In 1851 it seated 450 people and attendances were was 110 in the morning, 40 in the afternoon, and 150 in the evening.
Eight years after Castleden died in 1854, Bethel Baptist Chapel was dissolved in 1862 after Heath Street Church opened. Some members joined the Baptist churches in New End or on Heath Street, while others met at Montagu Grove (No 103-109 Frognal), the residence of Richard Burdon Sanderson who acted as minister until 1864. After that, 32 members then joined New End chapel.
Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel at Christchurch Passage, New End, originated when eight members and several adherents seceded from the Bethel Chapel in 1825. They were offered meeting rooms in the homes at New End of George Jackson (1825) and James Rice Seymour (1826).
Their numbers grew quickly and the Ebenezer Chapel opened in 1827 in a former schoolroom. By 1851, the chapel seated 170 people, and attendances was 30 in the morning and 36 in the evening.
The chapel was compulsorily purchased for the Carnegie House flats in 1938, and the congregation then moved to Temple Fortune, Hendon.
Meanwhile, Heath Street Baptist Church was founded by the Victorian timber tycoon James Harvey, in gratitude for his son’s recovery from sickness. Harvey was a deacon at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church and recently widowed. His Alfred James Harvey was so ill the doctors said there was only one hope. The family would have to leave Bloomsbury Square to live somewhere that offered a slim chance that ‘the delicate health of the child’ might recover in fresher, cleaner air.
James Harvey chose Hampstead, and from the first week he arrived he would go each Sunday to the house around the corner where the local Baptist community met for worship and prayer. The prayers for Alfred were heard, the boy recovered, and his father felt the time had come to show his gratitude.
Harvey obtained a site on a former nursery 1861, and he provided a large part of the cost of building the chapel, as local Baptists where poor.
The church is built of brick with a prominent ashlar west front in the Decorated style with twin spires. It was designed by CG Searle in 1861, with seating for 700 people. The first minister was the Revd William Brook jr, and the church was formed with 34 members in 1862, many from the earlier Baptist church on Holly Bush Hill.
Open-air services were held on Sunday evenings on Hampstead Heath and in New End, and during the week in the back streets of Hampstead. Membership rose to 226 in 1871, 320 in 1881, 424 in 1904, and reached a peak of 527 in 1913. Attendance in 1886 was 457 in the morning and 351 in the evening; by 1903, those figure were 253 and 291.
Those numbers fell with World War I, although 33 new members joined after the closure of Regent’s Park Church in 1922. The number of members was put at 184 in 1952. The church joined the London Baptist Association when it was formed in 1865. A city missionary was supported by members to work among summer visitors to Hampstead Heath.
Winter services were also held at Child’s Hill in Hendon, where a mission hall seating 150 people opened in 1867. A chapel opened there in 1870 with seating for 450. It became an independent church in 1877.
James Hey also gave adjoining land in 1881 where a lecture hall was built with classrooms below. A gymnasium with a reading and recreation rooms was built on a plot in Cornick’s Yard bought by a church member in 1896. Rickett Hall was built for a men’s institute in 1908.
Drummond Street Mission, which was built in Kentish Town in 1865, was taken over by Heath Street Baptist Church when Regent’s Park church closed. It became separate as Regent’s Park Free Church in 1958. Heath Street Baptist Church has also many foreign mission workers, including Sir Clement Chesterman (1894-1963), who overhauled the health system in what is now the Congo and helped set up the Congolese National Health Service.
Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel at Kilburn Vale (later Hermit Place), Belsize Road, was built 1870 in memory of Thomas Creswick by his sister. He had preached nearby in open air and worked among sick people in 1859-1868. The site was said to be near where he preached his last sermon.
Brondesbury Baptist Chapel on the corner of Kilburn High and Iverson Road, was built on a site given by James Harvey in 1878. It was an ornate building with a tower and spire designed by WA Dixon and seating 780 people. The church closed in 1980 and was demolished, with plans for a smaller church and sheltered flats.
Heath Street Baptist Church, Hampstead, expresses its mission as the ‘the desire ... to see strangers transformed into a community, and neighbours working together to transform the world. Our community is founded on our common desire to love God, serve our neighbourhood, and follow Jesus Christ.’
• The Revd Ewan King is the minister of Heath Street Baptist Church. Sundays services at 11 am follow a traditional pattern of prayers, Bible readings, hymns and sermon. The Lord’s Supper is celebrated on the first Sunday of each month and all ‘who love the Lord Jesus Christ and seek to be his disciples are welcome to join us around his table’. The church also runs the Contact Club for homeless people in Hampstead on Sunday evenings, hosts a baby and toddler music group and is a venue for concerts.
