High Pavement Chapel


High Pavement Chapel is a redundant church building in Nottingham. It is now the Pitcher and Piano public house and is Grade II listed. It was built as, and for most of its existence operated as, a Unitarian place of worship.
tram in the foreground

History

By August 1662, under the Act of Uniformity, two Nottingham ministers, John Whitlock and William Reynolds, had been deprived of their living at St Mary's Church, Nottingham and a third, John Barret, of his at St Peter's; the three men left town to comply with the Five Mile Act 1665. However, they continued to preach in the area, including houses in Nottingham's Bridlesmith Gate and Middle Pavement. This led to the foundation of a permanent chapel in High Pavement in 1690.
By 1735 the congregation had established itself as liberal and in 1802 as Unitarian. In 1758 the appointment of a new junior minister, Isaac Smithson, caused a schism. The senior minister withdrew to a new chapel in nearby Halifax Place. This schism lasted until 1775 when the two congregations merged. The original chapel was considerably rebuilt in 1805.
In 1864 the congregation opened a daughter church, Christ Church, Peas Hill. This survived until 1932.
The current building was opened in 1876, built to a design of the architect Stuart Colman, of Bristol. It was used as a place of worship for Unitarians until 1982. It was then converted into the Nottingham Lace Museum, but this venture proved financially unviable. The building was then converted to its current use, as a Pitcher and Piano public house. The current congregation, Nottingham Unitarians, affiliated with the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, are now based nearby at 3 Plumptre Street, Nottingham NG1 1JL, a former lace factory where items of lace were finished.

Stained glass