Baptist Chapel, Great Warford

Baptist Chapel stands in Merryman’s Lane in the village of Great Warford, Cheshire. It began in 1712 when dissenters bought a barn and cottage and turned the barn into their meeting place. In 1813 the building was split, the west end becoming a minister’s cottage and the east end remaining the chapel. The chapel is listed at Grade II* on the National Heritage List for England.

The chapel shows its early timber frame in the north wall, where ten oak uprights and four horizontals still stand. The 1813 rebuilding added brick to the south, east and west walls and inserted two-storey windows on the south front. A datestone above the ground-floor windows reads “WBC 1813,” and a plaque on the south front notes the chapel’s founding in 1642 at Norbury Houses. Inside, the roof rests on two central posts and a gallery occupies the east end.

Visitors find an interior only 24 feet by 15 feet, with original furniture and five 19th-century box pews on the north side and four on the south. A coke stove sits in the middle of a pew on the north side. The registers start in 1757, and the chapel once hosted a wedding scene for the TV series Cousin Phillis.