Sidmouth Unitarian Church, the oldest non-conformist chapel in Sidmouth, Grade II listed. Built 1710 on the site of a former barn at the rear of the White Hart Inn. Restyled 1886.
"A dissenting congregation has been meeting here for well over three centuries, initially as a clandestine persecuted group of Presbyterians following the "Great Ejection" of non-Conformists after the 1660 Restoration.
Following William of Orange's "Glorious Revolution" a generation later, whose troops invaded the kingdom through Devon, the Act of Toleration permitted Protestant non-Conformists to form Sidmouth's first alternative church. They built the "new meeting house" for Free Christians, on the outer edge of the parishes of Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth.
"The Old Dissenting Meeting House" dates from the early 18th century. It became a centre of Unitarianism a century later under the leadership of the Rev. Edmund Butcher, who wrote the first guide book to the town of Sidmouth and also campaigned for improved working conditions for the local lace-workers.
A later minister Nicholas Samuel Heineken, a polymath and composer, was a friend and mentor to the Sidmouth antiquarian Peter Orlando Hutchinson.
One of several local Dissenting families, the Carslakes, had naval connections, including an ancestor who served under Lord Nelson and later set up England's first civic society, now known as the Sid Vale Association.
Two descendants of this family, the sisters Thomazine Mary and Annie Leigh Browne, opened Sidmouth's first maternity hospital and other educational and medical facilities, contributed to the endowment of the first council houses in the town and landscaped "The Byes" as a recreational area along the banks of the river Sid, which they bequeathed to the people of Sidmouth and Salcombe Regis. "The Byes" are now owned by the National Trust and managed by local volunteers.
A 25 year long national suffrage campaign was crowned with success in 1907, when Annie with her fellow Unitarian and life-partner Mary Stuart Kilgour secured female representation in UK Local Government. Annie's sister, a scientist and mathematics lecturer, married the astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer with whom she founded and managed the Observatory at Salcombe Regis which still flourishes as a major local attraction. These three formidable women set up London University's first Hall of Residence for women in Bloomsbury in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
By the 1930s Unitarian minister Rev. Constance Harris had been ordained as Sidmouth's first female parish leader.
The buildings were extended in the 1880s with the addition of a school room (now a Dance Studio) and "improvements" to the church including an entrance porch, a pipe organ in the West Gallery, and the replacement of the thatched roof. The plain Puritan windows of the old meeting house were retained in the south wall but were replaced elsewhere with Victorian-gothic including a stained glass window representing a pale, bearded Victorian gentleman wearing imperial scarlet, silver and gold robes, delivering the essential message of Jesus: the Sermon on the Mount.
The church decor now also includes ancient illustrations of the life of the Buddha on his road to enlightenment, and a decorated text of the names of Allah from the Holy Koran and a 14th century sculpture representing Eve plucking the 'forbidden' fruit, celebrating the mystery of the 'fortunate fall'.
The West Gallery was restored in 2017-19 allowing natural light to enhance the experience of afternoon services and ceremonies as well as opening up an additional communal meeting, study and performance space.
Dissenter's Trustees today recognise their responsibility to maintain and make available for the local community our grounds and buildings, a legacy from the thriving Unitarian presence in the town over previous centuries."
SOURCE - (
visit link)