The Old Jewry Meeting-house was a

meeting-house A meeting house (also spelled meetinghouse or meeting-house) is a building where religious and sometimes private meetings take place. Terminology Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist Protestant denominations distinguish between a: * chu ...

for an English Presbyterian congregation, built around 1701, in the

Old Jewry Old Jewry is a one-way street in the City of London, the historic and financial centre of London. It is located within Coleman Street ward and links Poultry to Gresham Street. The street now contains mainly offices for financial companies. ...

, a small street in the centre of the

City of London The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...

. Its first minister was John Shower. In 1808 new premises were built in Jewin Street.

Origin

Edmund Calamy the Younger Edmund Calamy the Younger (c. 1635–1685) was an ejected minister. Early life Edmund was the eldest son of Edmund Calamy the Elder, by his first wife, Mary Snelling, daughter of Robert Snelling. He was born at Bury St. Edmunds about 1636. His ea ...

, an

ejected minister 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 Stuart Restoration, Restoration of Charles II of England, Charles II ...

, gathered a congregation from 1672 at Curriers' Hall. After his death in 1685, it moved to Jewin Street in 1692, and, expanding, under John Shower, had a purpose-built meeting-house constructed nearby in Old Jewry. This structure, opened in around 1701, gave the congregation its name for over a century.

New building

In 1808 the meeting-house was rebuilt in Jewin Street, on a site almost opposite the one it had occupied between 1692 and 1701, for

Abraham Rees Abraham Rees (1743 – 9 June 1825) was a Welsh nonconformist minister, and compiler of '' Rees's Cyclopædia'' (in 45 volumes). Life He was the second son of Esther, daughter of Abraham Penry, and her husband Lewis Rees, and was born i ...

as minister. (It was distinct from the Jewin Street Chapel, an Independent congregation, also known as "Woodgate's Meeting-House" after the previous minister; at the time the minister there was Timothy Priestley. John James Baddeley, ''Cripplegate, one of the twenty-six wards of the City of London'' (1921) pp. 278–9
archive.org.
/ref> See also the Jewin Welsh Presbyterian Chapel, which had premises on that street.) The move came about because of the imminent end of the lease in Old Jewry, in 1810. The architect of the new chapel was Edmund Aikin. The old brick meeting-house was knocked down, to make way for the " New Bank Buildings", designed by

Sir John Soane Sir John Soane (; né Soan; 10 September 1753 – 20 January 1837) was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. The son of a bricklayer, he rose to the top of his profession, becoming professor of architecture at the Ro ...

. A decline in the congregation caused the closure of the chapel in 1840. It passed from Presbyterian control in 1841. The new Methodist tenants demolished the chapel in 1846, rebuilding it in a

Gothic style Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque ar ...

in 1847.

Ministers

*John Shower * Timothy Rogers as assistant *Joseph Bennett as assistant * Simon Browne *Thomas Leavesley *

Samuel Chandler Samuel Chandler (1693 – 8 May 1766) was an English Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist minister and pamphleteer. He has been called the "uncrowned patriarch of English Dissenters, Dissent" in the latter part of the reign of George II ...

Henry Miles Henry Miles, FRS (2 June 1698 – 10 February 1763) was an English Dissenting minister and scientific writer; a Fellow of the Royal Society known for experiments on electricity. Life He was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 2 June 1698. He ...

Richard Price Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer and pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the F ...

* Thomas Amory *Nathaniel White *

*1825–1840 David Davison, resigned 1840, was the last pastor. The building became a

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan–Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charle ...

chapel.

Notes

{{coord, 51.5143, -0.0909, type:landmark_region:GB-LND, display=title Former churches in London Former Presbyterian churches 1701 establishments in England