Parliamentarians, Poets and Rebels: Unitarian Chapel, Bridgwater

Likenesses of Admiral Blake, a prominent Parliamentarian during the Civil War, can be found on Deptford Town Hall and on the facade of the old naval hospital in Greenwich. However, reminders of his life are most prolific in his home town, Bridgwater. As well as his statue, the Blake Museum, and various buildings named for him, there is a plaque on the wall of the Unitarian Chapel where his protege preached. It was founded by his friends, and its early fate was closely tied to the conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians.

In 1662, the Rev John Norman was ejected from the parish church: a consequence of the restoration of the monarchy two years earlier. He was a protege of Blake, and so the admiral's friends rallied round to create a new congregation. Their chapel was destroyed by the authorities in 1683, during the Monmouth Rebellion, but was rebuilt again and the building still bears the date 1688. The current building, however, dates from 1788 as another, rather more florid panel attests. (The shell-shaped hood over the door may be from the 1688 building.) A schoolroom was added to the back in the nineteenth century. 

The building has other famous connections: inside, a plaque commemorates George Lewis Browne, who fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and brought his body back to England. Another plaque outside records that poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived for a while in the town and nearby Nether Stowey, preached here twice in 1797 and 1798.