Montpelier Place Baptist Church, originally known as the Baptist Tabernacle, is a former Baptist church in the Montpelier area of Brighton, part of the English seaside city of Brighton and Hove. It opened in 1967 to replace a 140-year predecessor on West Street in central Brighton, but was closed in 2012 and demolished over the 2017–2018 Christmas and New Year period. Houses and flats now occupy the site; the development was completed in December 2019.
The Tabernacle in West Street served Independent Calvinistic worshippers at first, but its doctrines later changed to Strict Baptist. Its successor maintained this character, and in its later years—along with another church in Brighton—was a member of an organisation for Reformed Evangelical Christian churches. Decline in the 21st century led to its closure and a period of dereliction during which it was squatted. The building was starkly Modernist in style, with echoes of Basil Spence's Coventry Cathedral—a contrast to the Classical appearance of the West Street Tabernacle.
History
West Street
Protestant Nonconformism was a significant feature of the religious life of East Sussex from the 17th century—in particular a local form of Calvinist doctrine "explicitly rooted in 16th-century puritanism". In Brighton, the largest town, several Strict Baptist and independent Calvinistic causes were founded in the 18th and 19th centuries, all of which could trace their origins back to one of two older churches: Salem Chapel (1766) and Providence Chapel (1805). Salem Chapel on Bond Street in the North Laine district was formed when some members of Bethel Strict Baptist Chapel, Wivelsfield were sent to offer assistance to a group of Calvinistic Baptists who wanted to found a church in Brighton. A permanent chapel was built in 1787, rebuilt in 1861 and survived until 1974, having closed two years earlier. Providence Chapel, an independent Calvinistic cause on nearby Church Street, was founded by a former curate of St Nicholas Church who had seceded from the Church of England and met the Calvinistic preacher William Huntington, who helped him to found the new chapel.
One of the later chapels was the Tabernacle on West Street, opened in 1834. One source states that it was one of three founded by seceders from Providence Chapel, along with the short-lived Cave Adullam (1836) and Jireh (1842) chapels; while another historian states that on 13 August 1833, a visiting preacher from London had to step in at short notice to lead a special service at Salem Chapel after the minister was taken ill, and that "his testimony that day was [so] well received" that worshippers asked for him to return to Brighton and minister there permanently. In January 1834 he began to preach in hired rooms, including the Assembly Room of the Old Ship Hotel; and on 16 April of that year a church was formally constituted along Independent Calvinistic lines under his leadership.
A site was found just off West Street, the western boundary of the ancient town, and the foundation stone of the Tabernacle was laid on 1 May 1834. Building work was complete four months later, and the new chapel was registered for the solemnisation of marriages in November 1837. The building was Neoclassical in style, topped with a pediment and with a rendered façade; a photograph from the 1950s, taken after the council cleared buildings which had obscured it from view in order to build Regency Road, shows a tall two-storey three-bay symmetrical façade with arched windows flanked by pilasters of the Ionic order. The chapel had a capacity of 900; the interior had galleries around three sides and a double-decker pulpit entered from a vestry at first-floor level.
Until 1865, the theology of the chapel was consistent with other independent Calvinistic chapels and distinct from that of Strict Baptist chapels, which held a narrower view of the doctrine of baptism: to the latter, "baptism is the door to the church and communion [should be] confined to those who are members". The Tabernacle, in contrast, practised "open communion"—although some worshippers identified more closely with Strict Baptist beliefs. Disagreement over the election of a new pastor in 1865 led to a secession by Strict Baptist members, who founded Galeed Chapel on nearby Gloucester Road in 1868. In 1906, though, the Tabernacle itself was reconstituted as a Strict Baptist chapel after the election of the next minister. Such doctrinal shifts were common: "many—even a majority of—Strict Baptist causes in Sussex have Independent origins".