Toxteth Unitarian Chapel

Toxteth Unitarian Chapel stands on Park Road in the Dingle district of Liverpool. Built in stone with a slate roof, it has two storeys and a western extension with a projecting bay. The chapel has round-headed windows with stone surrounds and paired round-headed entrances at the west end. A small octagonal cupola with louvres and a button finial crowns the south end. The building is Grade I listed and remains in use as a Unitarian chapel. The chapel’s history begins in 1611 when Puritan farmers built a school and appointed Richard Mather as its master at the age of fifteen. By 1618 Mather preached his first sermon in the newly built chapel, later becoming ordained in the Church of England. In 1633 and 1634 he was suspended for nonconformist preaching and emigrated to America in 1635. By the 1660s the chapel was led by Presbyterian Thomas Crompton and Dissenter Michael Briscoe, who enlarged it in 1672 to accommodate Dissenters from central Liverpool. Inside, the pulpit sits at the east end with galleries on three sides and box pews throughout. The north and south galleries date from the 17th century, with a connecting gallery from the 18th century. Two box pews bear dates of 1650 and 1700, and monuments include a brass from 1656 and wall tablets from the 18th and early 19th centuries. A graveyard with a mid-19th-century classical arcade surrounds the chapel, and a memorial plaque honours Jeremiah Horrocks, the first to predict the transit of Venus.