By Jo Lewis and Mark Mitchley
Denomination: Bible Christian
Location at Cliff Close, Gorran Haven
Opened: ? August 1831
Closed: c. ?1846
Anniversary:
Sunday School: No
Sunday School building: No
Sunday School anniversary: none
Current status: Demolished
Multiple references suggest an early Independent Chapel in Gorran Haven in the early 1800s. It is not absolutely known if this refers to the Wesleyan Chapel (**) or this short-lived Bible Christian Chapel. It may simply refer to the St Just Chapel, see Independent History (**)
** https://cornishstory.com/2024/10/04/mapping-methodism-gorran-haven-wesleyan-chapel/
There is also a suggestion of an early Primitive Methodist chapel in the Gorran parish itself but this has not (yet) been located; after further exhaustive research (2024) we can’t locate a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Gorran Haven.
The Gorran Haven Bible Christian Chapel was very short lived. It was at the top of Church Steet at the turn before Chute Lane on the left and Cliff Road on the right (coming up the hill), as shown on map (gardens of Rose Cottages).
Documents exist showing that in October 1836 William Hugoe sold a part of the middle of three gardens measuring eighteen feet square at the bottom of Cliff Road for seven pounds and ten shillings to a group of dissenting worshippers. On the land had been ‘lately erected’ a chapel called the Gorran Haven Bible Christian Chapel.
The chapel was likely built in August 1831. The probable building outline can be seen on the 1842 Tithe Map next to tenements owned by the Hugoe family and rented to Richard Hennah. When Christine Hawkridge wrote her short history of the village in the early 1970s, she made reference to a photograph of ‘… a chapel in Dick Hennah’s garden…’ and records that it was demolished in the early years of the Twentieth Century.
The chapel only seemed to perform one baptism, that of Hester Burn on 4th March 1842, a likely adult baptism; and even that is not certain. Bible Christian notebooks survive from 1848 but there is no mention of the chapel, and there is no mention of it either in the 1851 religious census. This makes an operating date of 1831 to about 1846 most likely.
There are no Bible Christian Chapels recorded in any of the Chapel returns for Gorran Haven, likely because of its early build and then demise.