THE INDEPENDENT or CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL later
THE UNITED REFORMED CHURCH and now called CHRIST CHURCH

The Coggeshall Congregational Chapel has its origins in a remarkable vicar of Coggeshall, the Rev John Owen, who came here in 1646. He was one of the formost religious thinkers in the country and formed a society here to talk about matters of religion which were very much a hot topic at the time. A central tenet was that the local congregation had authority on matters of religion – ‘when two or three are gathered together in my name’. The group gathered in the church for almost sixteen years.

When Owen left Coggeshall (he was a favorite of Oliver Cromwell) the group continued within St Peter’s church but the Act of Conformity of August 1662 caused a split. The then vicar, the Rev John Sames,  was not able to assent as required to the the entirety of the Book of Common Prayer so had to resign. Across the country the various groups who could not assent to the act became the ‘non-conformists’. Coggeshall was a notable centre for non-conformisty including the Baptists, the Wesleyan Methodists and the Quakers and was described in a report of 1669 for the Archbishop of Canterbury as ‘Coggeshall. Hard to be supressed’.

When Sames left the established church so did the members of the ‘Congregational fellowship’ established by Owen, so 1662 is regarded as foundation date for the Coggeshall Congregational Church.

The group led by Sames met at first in a private house and then, for lack of space, in a converted barn on the north side of East Street. In 1710 they moved to the present site in Stoneham Street where Thomas Crosby of Bocking built a meeting house for them. It was 45 x 36 feet with galleries and a vestry. It was registered  as ‘a meeting house for religious worship of Protestant dissenters from the Church of England commonly called Independents 31st August 1710’.

In 1794, another piece of land was purchased between the Meeting House and Church Lane (now Queen Street). In 1834 the church was considerably enlarged at a cost of about £1,000 and in 1865 an extension provided an apse around the east end behind the pulpit to accommodate the organ and choir.

Bryan Dale, M A, author of “The Annals of Coggeshall”, was minister here from 1855 until 1863 and as well as the history of Coggeshall his book details Coggeshall’s religious history, especially that of the Independent church.

The Congregationalists had given financial support to a small school since 1788 and in 1811 this was expanded into the ‘British Schools’ which was to provide education for children of all denominations (unlike the National School on Stoneham Street which was a Church of England school). Originally there had only been a Sunday School which was attended by hundreds of children but this soon expanded to include a day school.  In 1841 new school rooms were built on a piece of land along Queen Street. This was enlarged in October 1856 to accomodate the increased number of children who were attending the schools. The extension comprised ‘an upper room 44 feet x 40 feet a lower room about the same size and class rooms’ (according to the Chelmsford Chronicle 17 October 1856) and cost £350. In 1862 the Boys Day School had 80 children, the Infants School 110 and the Sunday School 600. From these figures (given by the Rev Dale) it is apparent that girls were not educated here at this time but from 1870 they certainly were.

The school was maintained by donations from individuals and small payments by the pupils but the requirements of the Forster Education Act of 1870 made running the school much more expensive and it looked for a while as if it might close. However funding was found and in 1879 the school was enlarged again with a new building added to the east which had three new classrooms on the ground floor and a lecture hall above. Corridors provided a link to the old remodeled building. The lecture hall soon became the regular venue for parish meetings and entertainments. (see plan below from the museum archive)