The Old Jewry Meeting-house was a meeting-house 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. The ...

, a small street in the centre of the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

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

Origin

Edmund Calamy the Younger, 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 Restoration of Charles II. It was a consequence (not necessarily ...

, 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 in ...

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 Edmund Aikin (2 October 1780 – 11 March 1820) was an English architect and writer on architecture. He spent the last years of his life in Liverpool, where he designed the Wellington Rooms, Liverpool, Wellington Rooms. Life Aikin came from a U ...

. 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 Neoclassical architecture, Neo-Classical style. The son of a bricklayer, he rose to the top of his profession, becoming professo ...

. 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 or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths ** Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken ...

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 minister and pamphleteer. He has been called the "uncrowned patriarch of Dissent" in the latter part of George II's reign. Early life Samuel Chandler was born at Hungerford in ...

*Henry Miles *Richard Price *Thomas Amory (tutor), Thomas Amory *Nathaniel White *

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