This building is located at the western end of Stokes Road. It took me a while to find out that until 2017 it was one of Gosport’s two United Reform Church (URC), like any history it’s not straightforward.
Every so often over the last few years, my interest in the building would be re-kindled, and I would spend a bit of time trying to find out about it. I had opportunity today to add to the investigation, by walking home from one of the local shopping centres, I could take this to route me past the current URC and the old one. The thing is though that I had no awareness of the history of what had been going on. Today, I have been a bit more persistent in my digging, and that has borne fruit.
When the building was built in 1957, it was the Congregational church, merging with the Presbyterian church in 1972 to become the United Reform Church. I’m not sure what triggered the merger – that’s another avenue that I could explore if I were of a mind to – but really it’s what happened to the building and why, that I am interested.
In 2017 the building was closed, the congregation merged with the URC St Columba at Elson, here’s a picture of that church;
I managed to get that today on my walk. I was able to find all this out because I persisted with my search today and I found this, which explains nearly everything; https://gosporthistoryclub.org.uk/gosport-history-archive-index/urc-high-st-urc-bury-rd-gosport-history Now, I’m a member of the Gosport Society, and I had never heard of the Gosport History club. Clearly, there’s some exploration to be done. I am assuming that the Bury road URC merged with the Elson church because of the respective congregation sizes. I’d like to get the answer to that question.
Bills Posts 