Whitefield's Tabernacle, Kingswood

Whitefield’s Tabernacle stands in Kingswood, on the eastern edge of Bristol, where the 18th-century preacher George Whitefield once spoke to coal miners in the open air. The site contains two linked buildings: the older Calvinistic Methodist chapel built in 1741 and a much larger Gothic church designed by Henry Masters in 1851. The first chapel, known as the New Society Room, became a Grade I listed ruin after an arson attack left it roofless and derelict. The Gothic church, Grade II listed, once seated a very large congregation but closed in 1983. After decades of use and disuse, the United Reformed Church moved out in 2023 and the Tabernacle itself stood empty until a fire in 2000 added to its decay. In 2003 it appeared on BBC Restoration, drawing wider attention to its condition and potential. Now owned by the Whitfield Tabernacle Trust, the building is being restored with a £682,000 grant to create a community arts centre. Work began in 2021 and trustees aim to finish by the end of 2026. The surrounding site includes the restored Chapel House and the converted Masters Church, now Ellis Court apartments, marking a new chapter for a place once central to local religious life.