Stapenhill: Protestant nonconformity

Protestant nonconformity

Although there was a conventicle at Cauldwell in 1669, only three nonconformists were recorded at Stapenhill in 1676. (fn. 1) In 1672, however, Henry Bee, a native of Stapenhill who had been ejected from Hanbury in 1662, was licensed as a Congregationalist in Stapenhill. (fn. 2) There were about six Methodists, all poor labourers, living in Stapenhill village in the earlier 1770s, but they attended services at the parish church. There were also a Presbyterian and a Moravian elsewhere in the parish, both of them elderly with children who were Anglicans. (fn. 3)

William Bennett of Stapenhill was a member of the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Burton in 1796. (fn. 4) There were five Stapenhill members of that chapel by 1809 and 21 by 1815. A chapel was opened in Stapenhill in 1834, and on Census Sunday 1851 it had an afternoon congregation of 17 and an evening one of 10. (fn. 5) The chapel (and later ones of 1854 and 1866) probably stood on the north side of Ferry Street, where a chapel built of brick in an Early English style was registered in 1902. (fn. 6) Closed in 1956, the former chapel at first became a youth centre. From 1970 part of the building was used for rehearsals by Burton and District Operatic Society, which became the owner of the whole building in 1996 and used it as its headquarters in 1999. (fn. 7)

There was a Primitive Methodist society at Stapenhill by 1829, but it had only four members in 1833 and seems to have folded that year. (fn. 8) A Primitive Methodist chapel was opened in Long Street in 1866. It was replaced in 1914 by one at the corner of Short Street and Baker Street, which remained open in 1999 as Short Street Methodist church. (fn. 9)

Members of the Wesleyan Methodist Reform movement started to meet at Stapenhill in 1851, and in 1855 they opened a United Methodist Free chapel in Pickering Street on the west side of Hill Street. (fn. 1a) It was replaced in 1868 by a chapel on the other side of the street. (fn. 2a) That building was retained as a Sunday school when a new chapel was opened on the east side of Main Street in 1907, but it was later demolished. (fn. 3a) The Main Street chapel, standing on an elevated site, is built of polychrome brick in an Art Nouveau style and has a projecting narthex below a large traceried west window. Services there ceased in 1971, and in 1972 the building became a Roman Catholic church. (fn. 4a)

Christian Brethren had a meeting room in Rosliston Road in 1900. (fn. 5a) The Christian Church of St. John was registered in Rosliston Road in 1937 for an undesignated Christian body, possibly brethren. (fn. 6a)

Spiritualists registered a meeting room in Stapenhill Road in 1961. (fn. 7a) The King's Church, so called in 1999, a corrugated-iron building at the corner of Stanton Road and Saxon Street, was registered for Pentecostalists by the Assemblies of God in 1967. (fn. 8a) A church for Latter Day Saints (Mormons) was built in Spring Terrace Road in 1974. (fn. 9a)