Patrick Comerford
I was writing yesterday about Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of the West End in London. But for much of the 19th and throughout the 20th century, Shaftesbury Avenue had another Baptist church, on the corner of Mercer Street, known for its ‘Strict Baptist’ theology and teachings that were in sharp contrast to the traditions and ethos of neighbouring Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.
The former Soho Baptist Chapel at 166A Shaftesbury Avenue has been known at different times as Soho Baptist Chapel, Gower Street Memorial Chapel and Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel and it is now the Soho Outreach Centre of the Chinese Church in London.
The church was built for a Strict Baptist community that had been formed almost a century earlier in 1791. Its origins dated back to the 18th century revival associated with George Whitefield and John Wesley.
In 1770, young Richard Burnham, began listening to a preacher in High Wycombe and within a few years began preaching himself. He was a pastor for a few years in Staines in Surrey. He moved to London around 1780 and was a pastor in Green Walk near Blackfriars Bridge. By 1787, he had formed a new congregation, Ebenezer Chapel, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Burnham left the congregation at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1791, and moved to Edward Street in Soho, naming his new congregation as Salem Chapel.
Four years later, another Baptist church on Grafton Street in Soho decided to relocate in 1795 and Burnham and his congregation took a lease on their property. Soho was then one of the poorest and most densely-populated areas in London. Burnham continued to minister there for another 15 years until he died in 1810.
Burnham was succeeded as the minister by John Stevens, originally from Northamptonshire, the son of a shoemaker. Stevens moved to London at the age of 16 to work as a shoemaker. He was rebaptised by Burnham at the Edward Street church and then moved with them to the new Grafton Street church.
Stevens had returned to Northamptonshire in 1795 and began preaching in his grandfather’s home. He founded a new church in Oundle in 1797, then moved to St Neots in 1799 and formed the town’s first Baptist church. He moved on to pastor a small church in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1805. He was considering his next move in ministry when Burnham died. The church at Grafton Street in Soho now had over 200 members and invited Stevens to return. He preached his first sermon at Grafton Street in July 1811 and by 1812 the church had 100 new members.
Stevens was known for his idiosyncratic positions, including his view on the pre-existent humanity of Christ. Soon, numbers meant a new building was needed, and the congregation moved west in 1813, still in the Soho area to a chapel built for Catholic services behind the Spanish ambassador’s house at No 8 Saint James Square, York Street, now Duke of York Street.
By 1818, Stevens’s writings were being debated heatedly. The church split into two factions, with Stevens building a new purpose-built chapel, Salem Chapel, at Meards’ Court, behind No 8-10 Wardour Street. He preached his last sermon at Salem Chapel in 1847 and died in October 1847. The Salem Chapel continued with JE Bloomfield and JT Briscoe as pastors until the 1870s, when it was sold to Bloomsbury Baptist Mission and then demolished in 1907.
Meanwhile, the faction that disagreed with Stevens’s Christology rejoined the Soho Chapel congregation that Burnham had originally founded at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and called George Comb as pastor. The congregation was located at Lisle Street when Comb became their pastor in January 1824, then moved to Oxford Street in 1825 and built a new chapel there in 1835.
Comb died in 1841, and was succeeded as pastor by George Wyard (1842-1856), John Pells (1858-1864) and Joseph Wilkins (1866-1873). While Joseph Wilkins was pastor, 23 churches met at Soho Chapel on Oxford Street in 1871 to form the Metropolitan Association of Strict Baptist Churches, later the Association of Grace Baptist Churches South East.
John Box, who became the pastor in 1875, drafted the Articles of Faith and oversaw building new church premises on Shaftesbury Avenue. The church was forced to move from Oxford Street in 1885 when the freeholder wanted to buy-out the lease to build business premises.
A new site was bought from the Metropolitan Water Board in June 1886. The site was on Shaftesbury Avenue, then a new road from Piccadilly Circus to Bloomsbury and described the as ‘a broad thoroughfare cut through a horrible and densely populated district’. Plans were drawn up to build a new chapel to seat 500 people and additional school accommodation. While the new chapel was being built, the congregation met in the Albert Rooms, Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road.
The church was built in 1887-1888 to a design by the architect William Gillbee Scott (1857-1930) of Bedford Row. When the chapel was partly built, three memorial stones were laid in May 1887 at a service attended by 600 people. A service of dedication was held in February 1888, and the congregation moved into its new premises.
After 26 years in pastoral ministry, John Box died in 1901. The church continued for several years without a pastor until TL Sapey was appointed in 1904. But numbers were falling, there was difficulty in paying Sapey’s stipend and removal expenses, and in 1906 he moved to Brixton Tabernacle.
The membership continues to fall and by World War I many members of the congregation were living in the Finchley area. Soho Baptist Chapel was sold in 1915, when it was bought by the Gower Street Chapel, which was being forced to move. The closing service in Soho Baptist Chapel was held in March 1917. The congregation moved to Finchley, where the Soho Memorial Chapel later became High Road Baptist Church.
The original Gower Street Chapel, which opened on 9 July 1820, was built in 1820 by seceding members from William Huntingdon’s Providence Chapel, which had been rebuilt in 1811 in Gray’s Inn Road.
The congregation in the Gower Street Chapel became known as Gadsbyites, or Strict Baptists, followers of William Gadsby (1773-1844), who is regarded by many as the founding figure of the Strict and Particular Baptist movement in England. They believed only a select few of God’s chosen people, the Elect, would attain salvation and everlasting life.
The hymn-writer Henry Fowler was the minister of the Gower Street Chapel from of July 1820 until he died in 1838. After Fowler’s death, the church could not agree on appointing a new preacher. Gadsby and another preacher, John Warburton, began preaching conflicting ideas to the same congregation.
Fowler was succeeded by Edward Blackstock, but his inconsistent views on communion led to many members to leave the chapel and in 1843 they formed their own Strict Baptist Church at Eden Street, Hampstead. Blackstock stayed on at the Gower Street Chapel, with fewer and fewer people attending his services, and eventually the mortgagee foreclosed. The chapel was sold to a born-again preacher, the Revd Arthur Triggs, in 1848 and enjoyed a brief resurgence.
However, Triggs was trying to sell the chapel in 1854. By then, the disaffected and now Baptist congregation had outgrown its premises in Hampstead and was looking to move. They bought the Gower Street Chapel back in 1854, and the congregation returned with its first service on 7 January 1855.
Disputes about key aspects of Christian doctrine and practice continued to divide the congregation, and by 1860 some members were denying the divinity of Christ.
The lease of the Gower Street building was to run for 99 years from 25 March 1820. The remainder of the lease was sold to Maple & Co in May 1917 for £250, and was due to expire on 25 March 1919. The congregation began planning and fundraising for a new building in 1911, and in 1916 they bought the Soho Baptist Chapel, on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Great White Lion Street.
The last service at the Gower Street Chapel was held on 24 April 1917, and the congregation moved to Shaftesbury Avenue in 1917, renaming the chapel as the Gower Street Memorial Chapel.
The church and congregation on Shaftesbury Avenue continued during the years between the World Wars without a pastor, and remained without a pastor until the appointment of JS Green (1956-1978), the first pastor the church had for 112 years.
The name was changed from Gower Street Memorial Chapel to Shaftesbury Avenue Chapel in 1994 to avoid confusion about its location.
But by the end of the 20th century, young people and students who frequented the chapel were no longer living in the Shaftesbury Avenue area and attendance figures had dropped dramatically. For financial reasons, the Gower Street Memorial Chapel finally closed in June 2002, and the building was sold in 2004 to the Chinese Church in London and became its Soho Outreach Centre.
The Chinese community in London had shifted from the Docklands and the East End after World War II to the West End and the area off Shaftesbury Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s, forming a new, thriving commercial area, and by the 1970s Chinatown had become a distinct area of its own.
The first gathering of the Chinese Church in London (CCIL) was on Christmas Eve of 1950, when a small group of people led by Pastor Stephen YT Wang met in Trafalgar Square. They began holding official services on 7 January 1951.
The CCIL began inquiring about the Gower Street Memorial Chapel in the 1980s and once again in the 1990s because of its location close to the relocated Chinatown. CCIL rented space in the Gower Street Memorial Chapel for baptismal services In the early 2000s,, and finally acquired the Gower Street Memorial Chapel on Shaftesbury Avenue in May 2004.
The Chinese Church in London has four other properties and seven congregations, offering services in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. Because of the popularity of the Chinese services, English services cannot be hosted in the Soho Outreach Centre and are instead are held at the Seven Dials Club.
• Sunday services are in Cantonese from 9:30 to 11 am and in Mandarin from 11:30 to 1 pm at the Soho Outreach Centre, and in English from 11:30 to 1 pm and in Cantonese from 2:30 to 4 pm at the Seven Dials Club.
