The Congregational Memorial Hall in

Farringdon Street Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, London. Route Farringdon Road is part of the A201 route connecting King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. It goes southeast from King's Cross, crossing Rosebery Avenue, then turns south, crossing C ...

, 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 is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...

. The two thousand

puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

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

The hall was built upon the site of the Fleet Prison 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 (trade name, trading as BT and 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 th ...

for its international business and

telephone tapping Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) 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 monitorin ...

. 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 the Congregational Library (housed at

Dr Williams's Library Dr Williams's Library is a small English research library in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London. Historically, it has had a strong Unitarian focus. The library has also been known as University Hall. History The library was founded using the e ...

since 1982) 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 2022 it has approximately 40,000 members in 1,284 congregations with 334 stipendiary ministers. Origins and history The United Reformed Church resulte ...

, 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 chur ...

and the

Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches The Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches (EFCC) is an association of around 120 independent local churches in the United Kingdom, each practising congregationalist church governance. The EFCC was founded in 1967 by those evangelica ...

References

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

See also

References