| Description | [For more information about the records in this collection please contact Berkshire Record Office.]
Summary
CHURCH ADMINISTRATION: church book, 1821-1884; church meeting minutes, 1841-1978; correspondence, 1894-1978; papers presented to church meetings, 1957-1992; meetings attendance book, 1958-1977.
DEACONS: minutes, 1912-1944, 1956-1971.
ELDERS: minutes, 1973-1978.
COMMITTEES: Building Committee minutes, 1861-1862; South Abingdon Committee minutes, 1967, and papers, 1966-1969; renovation committee minutes and papers, 1893-1895; Finance (later Finance and Property) Committee minutes, 1974-1993, and correspondence, 1973-1993.
TREASURER: accounts, 1715-1721, 1779-1780, 1913-1919, 1963-1974; annual statements of accounts, 1978/9-1991/2 (incomplete); offertory accounts, 1926-1944, 1965-1979; correspondence, 1972-1977.
PROPERTY: trustees’ minutes, 1901-1905; deeds of church site, 1416-1903, minister’s house, Ock Street, 1734-1779, land in Spring Road, 1860-1914, land in Sutton Courtenay 1559/60-1861, land in Drayton, 1651, land in Oxfordshire, 1652-1692; fabric papers, 1700-1989, including floor plan, 1700; papers re manse, 1954-1985, and 76-80 Spring Road, 1959-1980; accounts, 1852-1892, 1917-1924; fabric papers for Trinity site, Conduit Road, 1980-1999; papers relating to church hall, 1983-1989.
CHURCH ORGANISATIONS: Sunday School: teachers’ meetings, 1860-1899; accounts, 1890-1897; membership attendance registers, 1963-1995; miscellaneous, 1890-1910, 1959-1976.
Contact Club: papers, 1957-1960.
Youth Club: papers, 1957-1959.
Library: papers, c.1960-1967.
Trinity Guild: minutes, 1984-1998; register of members, 1965-1995; annual statements of accounts, 1964-1997; programmes, 1964-1996.
Trinity Play Group: photographs, 1985.
REGISTRATION AND MEMBERSHIP: baptisms, 1780-1844, 1909-1976; marriages, 1900-1968; burials, c.1787-1853; membership registers, c.1841-1884, 1917-1978; cradle roll, 1952-1965; certificates registering chapel for marriages, 1840, 1862; membership transfer papers, 1854-1912, 1970-1978.
SERVICE OF THE CHURCH: service registers, 1970-1977; orders of service, 1968, 1971; church covenant, c.1930-1963.
MINISTER: correspondence, 1892-1919, 1953-1964; photographs, n.d. [c.1845-1925].
CHARITIES: Richard Belcher’s charity: will, 1715; deeds, 1590-1851; accounts, 1855-1903; trustees’ minutes, 1905-1911; and papers, 1868, 1884-1907, 1933-1935, 1952-1978.
Thomas Copeland’s charity: accounts, 1865-1885.
Heron, Hide, Payne and Farmer bequests: deeds and papers, 1704-1727, 1767-1827; accounts, 1855-1885.
John Lissett’s charity: probate, 1712.
Edward Pearson’s charity: deeds, 1737, 1837; accounts, 1855-1904.
Payne and Baker charity: accounts, 1862-1892.
Joseph Fletcher’s charities: accounts, 1868-1886.
PUBLICATIONS: Magazines, 1918, 1950-1978; yearbooks, 1900-1908, 1958-1959; Two Centuries Young (church history), 1900.
OTHER BODIES : papers re merger with Trinity Methodist Church, 1967-1983; Free Church Federal Council committee minutes, 1953-1958; Abingdon and District Council of Churches minutes, 1973-1977; Berks, South Oxon and South Bucks Association of Independent Ministers and Churches (later BSOSB Congregational Union) papers, 1895-1919.
MISCELLANEOUS: notes on church history; photographs, 1990s. |
| Admin History | The Congregational Church at Abingdon originated in a Presbyterian congregation which met at Tubney, before moving to Abingdon in 1669.
The meeting house was erected in 1700. A popular but ill-founded legend identified the pillars holding up the roof with the masts of the Mayflower; an older (but still unproven) legend instead said they came from the ship which brought William of Orange to England in 1688.
By the 1770s the church was identified as Independent rather than Presbyterian, and between 1799 and 1807 it became Congregational.
Daughter churches existed at Sutton Courtenay (est. 1787, see D/N 20), Steventon (1787), Drayton (1797), Tubney (1797) and Fyfield. A Sunday School was established in 1808. The church was rebuilt in 1862.
The church joined the United Reformed Church in 1972. The congregation began to share worship at Trinity Methodist Church in 1968, vacating the original church building, which was sold in 1980. A formal Sharing Agreement between the Methodist and the URC congregations was signed in 1978 and amended in 1982.
Pre-1978 records relating to the Methodist Church are held at Oxfordshire History Centre. Records of the united church have been retained in this collection (D/N1). |