 |
| Site of the former Broad Street Baptist Chapel, July 2024 |
Thomas: Excuse me. Are you the Particular Baptists?
Algernon: Fuck off! ‘Particular Baptists’. We’re the General Baptists! ‘Particular Baptists’.
George: Wankers.
As Broad Street’s Revolution bar prepares to close for good on 11 August, with a day-long closing party scheduled for the day before, it’s interesting to muse upon the fact that the attendant ravers will be partying on a site that was once used for burials.
There are other examples around the city. The Bierkeller on Friar Lane, for example, is on the site of a former Congregational chapel that had burial vaults beneath it with space for up to 500 coffins, though in the event only 90-odd individuals were actually laid to rest there. There’s a reasonable chance that any given individual in that basement bar on a boozy Saturday night may actually be grooving in a space once occupied by a dead body.
Lovely.
But back to Revolution.
The building that Revolution occupies was erected in 1818 as the Broad Street General Baptist Chapel.
The former chapel structure that forms the main part of the current premises is clearly visible on satellite imagery, with the present frontage seemingly having being added at a later date.
After a merger with another chapel, the original building was sold in 1901 and converted into a lace warehouse, after which it presumably led a fairly uneventful life until its first flirtations with town nightlife and its attendant debauchery.
My interest in the site was piqued several weeks ago at the General Cemetery when I stumbled, pretty much literally, across a gravestone on which the following was inscribed:
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE PERSONS WHOSE REMAINS
ORIGINALLY INTERRED IN THE
VAULTS AND GRAVEYARD OF THE
BROAD STREET BAPTIST CHURCH
NOTTINGHAM BETWEEN THE
YEARS 1810 AND 1850
WERE REMOVED THENCE
IN MARCH 1903
AND NOW REST BENEATH
THIS SPOT
Ironically, I’d been wandering around a particular area of the cemetery grounds trying to rediscover a gravestone commemorating the Friar Lane burial vault reinterments that I’d located some months previously.
The 1810 date is confusing, given the fact that the chapel was only built in 1818, but now is not the time to go down that particular rabbit hole.
William Howie Wylie’s Old and New Nottingham (1853) informs us that the chapel had room for 650 worshippers and, amongst other information, adds that ‘In 1851 an entirely new entrance was made to the chapel and other alterations effected...’
Public health concerns relating to burial grounds in general led to a series of Burial Acts from 1852 onwards which resulted in the restriction of interments in inner-city burial places.
I sought out more information about the burials and found the following news story (headed ‘DISCOVERY OF SKELETONS IN NOTTINGHAM’) that appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post on 14 August 1903:
‘The conversion of the Old Broad-street Baptist Chapel (the sale of which took place some time ago) into business premises has, this week, brought to light a remarkable number of skeletons, the remains of persons buried in the ground attached to the chapel during the last century. Six months ago, Dr. Boobbyer, the medical officer of health, got a patent from the Home Office for the removal of the bodies, known to be buried there, but, apparently, no proper register of burials had been kept, and the authorities were left without any guide as to the number of interments that had taken place. About 120 bodies were removed, and a certificate sent to the Home Office that as far as practicable the spot had been investigated. Yesterday, however, whilst the workmen were engaged in excavating the rising ground on either side of the chapel, which ascends several feet above the level of the street, they came across a number of other skeletons, many of which were without coffins, the latter having long since rotted away. Bones were also found under the foundation walls of the chapel, about twenty skeletons being taken out in all. They have been properly coffined under the direction of the Health Department, and conveyed to the General Cemetery for interment. The chapel burial ground was in use from the beginning of last century down to about 1856.’
A somewhat ignominious end for those poor souls, compounded by the fact that at least some of their former graves probably ended up being literally danced on.
Perhaps the building’s next incumbent will be a business more in keeping with the once sacred nature of this site.
 |
| Broad Street Baptist Chapel memorial stone, General Cemetery, July 2024 |
No comments:
Post a Comment