The chapel, which stands on
Rosslyn Hill, was at first a simple wooden structure. Said to have been built in 1692 by Isaac Honeywood who lived in the adjoining mansion, the Red Lion Hill meeting house was first replaced in 1736 and then, having become unsafe, rebuilt in brick on roughly the same site in 1828.[2] The current building (using the old brick chapel as its hall) was built from 1862 to 1885 in the
Neo Gothic style. Two of the building's stained-glass windows are by
Edward Burne-Jones and
William Morris and another is by
Henry Holiday. It holds four
John Flaxman reliefs and plaques to previous congregants, such as
Helen Allingham (the first woman artist admitted to the
Royal Academy). Its stone arches and pointed ceiling vault give it an excellent acoustic, making it a popular recording venue.
Ministers
The minister is Kate Dean.[3][4] Ministers who have served the Chapel include
Stephen Lobb (1647?–1699),
Richard Amner (1736–1803), Rochemont Barbauld, husband of the radical poet
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825),
Jeremiah Joyce (1763–1816) and
William Hincks (1794–1871). It was during the 45-year-long ministry of
Thomas Sadler (1822–1891), who arrived at the Chapel in 1846 aged 24, just two years after being awarded his doctorate from the
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Bavaria, that the current Chapel building was constructed.[5]
Congregation
Among the prominent residents of Hampstead who occasionally attended the Chapel in the years immediately after it was built in 1862 was the novelist
George Eliot.[6] Politicians who were worshippers included
John Wood (1789–1856), a trustee of the chapel, who was a
Whig MP for
Preston (1826–32) and a strong supporter of the Great
Reform Act 1832,[7] and
William Lawrence (1818-1897),
Lord Mayor of London (1863/4) and twice Liberal MP for the
City of London (1865–74, 1880–85).