New Chapel

Names

  • New Chapel
  • New Church

Street/Area/District

  • Strutton Ground

Maps & Views

Descriptions

from A New View of London, by Edward Hatton (1708)

New chapel, (Westminster) see Stretton ground.

from A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, by John Strype (1720)

[New Chapel.] Chapel-street, so called from the new Chapel there seated.

This Chapel belongs to the Parish of St. Margaret's. There is a South Window given by Sir William Wheeler, having this Inscription; Deo & huic Sacello Gulielmus Wheler, Mil. & Baronettus hanc fenestram consecravit. The Vestry raiseth the Minister's Salary by taxing the Pews: So much upon those that sit in them. The last Friday every Month is a Preparation Sermon for the Sacrament here preached.

from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)

New Chapel, Broadway, Westminster, a chapel of ease to St. Margaret's, Westminster. A new church, dedicated December 14, 1843, and called Christ Church, has been substituted for it. The date of its foundation is fixed pretty accurately by the following entry in the burial register of St. Margaret's:—

9 May, 1627. Dennis Nowell—the first buried in the new Chapell yard.

The erection of the chapel is ascribed to Dr. Darrell, prebendary of St Peter's, who, in 1631, left £500 for the purpose; Sir Robert Pye, who added £500 to complete and furnish it; and Archbishop Laud, who contributed £1000 and some painted glass. It was not completed till 1636.1 Whitelocke mentions the burying-ground attached to it under the year 1649.2

There is of late a new Chapel of brick erected in Westminster at the entrance to Totehill Fields.—Howell's Londinopolis, fol. 1657, p. 353.
July 18, 1665.—I was much troubled to hear how the officers do bury the dead in the open Tottle-Fields, pretending want of room elsewhere; whereas the New Chapel Churchyard was walled in at the public charge in the last plague time,—now none but such as are able to pay dear for it can be buried there.—Pepys.

Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary general (d. 1668), was buried in the upper part of the middle aisle of the chapel.3 Wenceslaus Hollar, the engraver (d. 1677), in the Chapel yard. [So Vertue, but see St. Margaret's, Westminster.] The notorious Colonel Blood, who stole the crown from the Tower in the reign of Charles II. Blood died on August 24, 1680, and was interred here two days after. But dying and being buried were considered by the common people in the light of a new trick on the part of the colonel. So the coroner was sent for, the body taken up, and a jury summoned. There was some difficulty at first in identifying the body. At length the thumb of the left hand, which, in Blood's lifetime, was known to be twice its proper size, set the matter at rest; the jury separated, and the colonel was restored to his grave in the New Chapel yard.

Christ Church, which in 1843 took the place of the New Chapel, is an edifice of the Early English period, designed by Mr. A. Poynter, and contains some painted glass by Willement.

1 Walcott's Westminster, p. 286. 2> Whitelocke (d. 1732), p. 99.
3 Ath. Ox., ed. 1721, voL ii. p. 419.