The Congregational Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London was built to commemorate the 200th anniversary of

Great Ejection The Great Ejection followed the Act of Uniformity 1662 in England. Several thousand Puritan ministers were forced out of their positions in the Church of England following the Restoration of Charles II. It was a consequence (not necessarily ...

of Black Bartholomew's Day, resulting from the 1662 Act of Uniformity which restored the

Anglican church Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

. The two thousand

puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

ministers who refused to take the oath of conformity thereby established non-conformism. The architect of the hall was

John Tarring John Tarring FRIBA (1806–1875) was an English Victorian ecclesiastical architect active in the mid-nineteenth century. Based in London, he designed many Gothic Revival churches for Nonconformist clients. Life Tarring was born at Holbeton, ne ...

The hall was built upon the site of the

Fleet Prison Fleet Prison was a notorious London prison by the side of the River Fleet. The prison was built in 1197, was rebuilt several times, and was in use until 1844. It was demolished in 1846. History The prison was built in 1197 off what is now ...

in Farringdon Street. It opened in 1875 and served as a meeting place and home for the Congregational Library. Other progressive organisations met there including the Labour Party which was founded at a meeting there on 27 February 1900 initially under the name of the Labour Representation Committee. The hall was demolished in 1968 and Caroone House was built on the site — an office which was used by

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

for its international business and

telephone tapping Wiretapping, also known as wire tapping or telephone tapping, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connecti ...

. In 1978 the Congregational Memorial Hall Trust was established to handle income from Caroone House and then from the capital raised from its sale. The income is used to maintain th
Congregational Library
(housed at

Dr Williams's Library Dr Williams's Library was a small English research library located in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London, the contents have now been relocated to Manchester. Historically, it has had a strong Unitarian focus. The library has also been known as ...

from 1982 to 2022 and now at Westminster College, Cambridge) and give grants to the three bodies represented on the trust, the

United Reformed Church The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. As of 2024 it had approximately 44,000 members in around 1,250 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers. The URC is a Trinitarian church whose theolog ...

, the

Congregational Federation The Congregational Federation is a small Christian denomination in Great Britain comprising 235 congregations, down from 294 in April 2014. The Federation brings together Congregational churches, and provides support and guidance to member churc ...

, the

Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches The Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches (EFCC) is an association of around 100 independent local churches in the United Kingdom, each practising congregationalist church governance. The EFCC was founded in 1967 by those evangelica ...

, and th
Unaffiliated Congregational Churches Charities

References

Gothic Revival architecture in London Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Camden Congregationalism in the United Kingdom {{congregationalism-stub

See also

References