Title:
HALSTEAD, OLD INDEPENDENT MEETING AND NEW CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
Level: Category
Congregational (later United Reformed) Church records
Level: Fonds
HALSTEAD, OLD INDEPENDENT MEETING AND NEW CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
Admin History:
An Independent meeting house was built in Parsonage Street, Halstead, in 1679. The congregation, formed by Revd William Sparrow after his ejection from the parish church in 1662, had previously met in a barn in the yard of the White Hart Inn.

In 1718, during the ministry of William Holman, the historian, the old meeting house was pulled down and a new one built. The meeting house was enlarged early in the nineteenth century. In 1832 the minister, Revd John Savill, resigned, and the church was dissolved. Whilst some members left and formed a church in the High Street (for records of which see D/NC 61), twenty-one members remained at the Old Independent Meeting and formed a new church on 4 April 1833.

In 1864 the eighteenth-century meeting house was demolished. A new chapel was opened in July 1866 and called the New Congregational Church.

In 1946 the two Congregational churches in Halstead united to form Halstead Congregational Church, which continued to worship at Parsonage Street. For records of Halstead Congregational Church see D/NC 62.