Congregational Church, Market Place, Melksham

An Independent congregation was founded in the town c.1771. They were influenced by the Methodist preacher John Honywell, who was ordained as the first pastor in 1778. In 1780 the site of the chapel in the Market Place was obtained on a long lease and a meeting house and vestry built. A register of births and baptisms was kept for 1776 to 1836 and the church was part of the Wiltshire and East Somerset Congregational Union. In 1809 four tenements on the western side of Semington Road were put in trust for the chapel and the land was used as a burial ground. This was closed in 1876. The church building became redundant in 1976 following the union of the Congregationalists with the Methodists and in 1979 the building was acquired by a group of residents who formed the Melksham & District Arts Association and opened the church as the Rachel Fowler Centre. The congregation joined the Methodists in their building as Melksham United Church.