Monument record 179/55/0 - Baptist Chapel, Barker Street

The meeting house, demolished 1957, is said to have been built in 1725 on a site formerly the property of Samuel Acton, a tobacconist and person of means, who also served as minister. The subsequent appointment of a Particular Baptist pastor led to a decline in attendance, and about 1770 the building was let to the Methodists, who used it until 1808. An attempt to re-establish the General Baptist church was made in 1812, when the meeting-house was reopened with help from the New Connexion church at Barton in the Beans, Leicestershire. The acceptance by the pastor, John Cooper, and his successors of Unitarian doctrines led to the expulsion of the church from the Connexion in 1833, and before 1840 to the demise of the society. The third Baptist church was formed here in 1862, removing in 1873 to a new chapel in Market Street (CSMR 179/19/0] after which the building passed to secular use (1).
Located on the 1851 town plan of Nantwich (2).

<1> Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), 1994, An Inventory of Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in the North of England, Cheshire Number 101 (Book). SCH4548.

<2> Ordnance Survey, 1851, Nantwich Board of Health Map (Maps and Plans). SCH2431.