A minute in the Chichester General Baptist Church Book of 10th June, 1849 says “The Title Deed of the General Baptist Meeting House ... has for many years been lost and cannot be found... We consider it to be desirable and very important that the Title be established in a secure and proper legal instrument.”

After the morning service on 19th August, 1849, members of ‘the old General Baptist Church’ met in Eastgate Chapel and recorded the following Declaration:

“A division having recently taken place in the Baffin’s Lane Congregation, a considerable number of highly respectable and influential members of the Society ..... have withdrawn, and together with ourselves meet for religious worship and Christian Edification in the General Baptist Chapel under the Ministry of Mr John Hill who has just completed his education for the Christian Ministry in the General Baptist Academy. As the only surviving members of the General Baptist Church in this City, so far as we are able to ascertain, we are desirous of forming ourselves again into fellowship as a Christian Church; and we now do this. Henceforth we call and acknowledge ourselves a General Baptist Church.”

The minute is signed by Martha Wooldridge and John Rendell. The reconstituted Church was subsequently welcomed by the General Baptist Assembly.²

The existing Trustees of the Chapel had been elderly and one wanted to resign, so the Committee of the General Baptist Assembly communicated with the Charity Commission about the Chapel and Trust and appointed a sub-committee to attend to the matter. A Deed was drawn up by Sir Robert Raper of Rapers, Solicitors, West Street, Chichester to new Trustees.³ From then until 1954 when the Chapel was sold, the charity was governed by an Indenture dated 1st December, 1849 under which the Chapel was “held upon trust to permit the said chapel to be used, occupied and enjoyed as a place of public religious worship for the service of God, by the Society of Protestant Dissenters of the denomination called General Baptists.”

The surviving Trustee of the Dell Hole Field, Mr. Dendy, a baker, paid the accumulated rent from 1804 to 1849 to the new Trustees who were appointed and about £100 was spent in putting the Chapel into a serviceable state.⁴

The General Baptists also purchased a burial ground in Wyke Lane (now usually spelt Whyke) on 28th March 1852, though there is no record of the date of the sale in the documents in the County Record Office. There is a Register of Burials from 1852 in the General Baptist Church Book 1849-1866 and papers relating to the closing of the burial ground in 1854.⁵

For many years until 1994 the ground was part of Cover’s yard, and the entrance gate has survived (see illustration 5). At the time of writing, it is being turned into a car park for a new housing development.

John Hill’s pastorate of Eastgate Chapel concluded in 1876, when the Chapel was again closed, and according to the Unitarian Historical Society, Baffin’s Lane Chapel also was closed from 1861 to 1883.⁶ Eastgate Chapel re-opened from 1883-1885 with R. E. Birks as pastor, followed in 1886 by C. A. Hoddinott (from Ashford), both of whom were ministers of both churches and “from this time the congregation had been one only, services being carried on at each place alternately.”⁷

²Church Book 1849 in County Record Office
³Information from W. D. Packham, Esq.
⁴Challen’s Transcripts, Vol. 48 Ibid
⁵Church Book 1849, Ibid
⁶Unitarian Historical Society Ibid
⁷Challen’s Transcripts, Vol. 48 Note at foot of list of members of Eastgate Chapel.