Bugby Chapel is an 18th-century former chapel in the centre of Epsom, a suburban town in Surrey, England. Known by this name (or Bugby's Chapel) in reference to its Calvinistic founder William Bugby, it was also known as East Street Chapel and later, as it passed into the ownership of different religious groups, as Salem Unitarian Chapel, Salem Baptist Chapel and the Epsom and District Synagogue. More than 200 years of religious use ended when it was converted into an office. The chapel is a Grade II Listed building.
History
Epsom became a fashionable town in the 18th century, popular with businesspeople and wealthy merchants from London who wanted to live in a country town within easy reach of the city. Protestant Nonconformism emerged in the town soon after the Act of Uniformity 1662, when covert Presbyterian meetings took place; a chapel was built in 1724, and hundreds of worshippers attended. It was an era in which congregations frequently split and new churches were formed in accordance with the views of their ministers, and such a secession occurred in the 1770s when William Bugby, a preacher with strong Calvinistic views, came to Epsom. He was influenced by the well-known ultra-Calvinist William Huntington, who moved to Ewell in 1775 after experiencing a religious conversion and held meetings there. Bugby took out certificates for the registration of religious meeting houses in Epsom in 1777 and 1778.
In 1779, Bugby bought a plot of land "on a narrow lane behind the [then] main London Road" and erected a chapel. A house, later called Rose Cottage, was attached to this, and there was a burial ground to the northeast. William Huntington's name was recorded in the registers there in that year as one of the ministers who had conducted baptisms. Bugby was then invited to preach in Brockham, near Dorking, in 1780; his meetings were successful, and a chapel was built in 1783. Like the chapel in Epsom, its character was Independent Calvinistic. (Such worship was "closely associated with Surrey" in the 18th and 19th centuries; other chapels established for preachers with these views include Providence Chapel at Charlwood, founded in 1816). From 1783 until his death in 1792, Bugby ministered at both the Epsom and the Brockham chapel. He also registered other places of worship in Surrey villages such as Effingham, Leigh and Betchworth. The nature of worship at the chapel in its early years was not well understood: the Anglican vicar of Epsom stated in 1788 that "a few years ago a gardener ... collected money enough to build a small [meeting] house, where he now has a small and uncertain congregation of Methodists ... they are chiefly people of the lowest class". Also at this time, the name of the chapel was not fixed: Bugby Chapel or Bugby's Chapel were used, but East Street Chapel, Little Chapel and the Old Huntingtonian Chapel were also recorded.
Calvinistic meetings continued at Bugby Chapel until 1825 or 1837, the date at which its baptismal and marriage registers were lodged at Somerset House in London. Events later in the 19th century are not clearly documented, although in the Government's religious census of 1851 it was recorded as a meeting place for Calvinistic Protestants. Attendance was said to be 30 to 40 people, and the Handbook of Epsom published in 1860 mentioned that "Joseph Irons [a preacher from a chapel at Camberwell] used occasionally to preach there". In 1889, the chapel took on a new guise as a Strict Baptist chapel when new trustees were appointed. The name Salem Chapel was adopted. The 1894 Ordnance Survey map identified it as Salem Unitarian Chapel, but it was reconstituted as Strict Baptist in 1896. A new trustees' document was produced on 17 August 1899, and thereafter the chapel was identified as Baptist on maps. Permanent pastors served between 1923 and 1932 and from 1944 onwards. A new chapel was built on the Dorking Road for the congregation in 1951; the "very nicely designed and fitted place of worship" opened on 30 June 1951, and Bugby Chapel was vacated.