 Brook Street Chapel
Luke Howard's son, John Eliot and his wife, Mariabella seceded from the Quakers and began meeting in the house of Mrs. Sands in Stonely Street, Tottenham in 1838. Luke Howard joined them in establishing the Brook Street Meeting House, later Chapel, in 1839.
At this time James Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, described Tottenham: In surroundings as nearly perfect as wealth and refinement could make them, a number of Christian families lived in the pleasant suburb, as it was in those days. Rooms, beautifully furnished, opened on lawns shaded by spreading cedars. Friends from far and near gathered around the ample board, where quiet talk flowed freely on the deepest interests of the kingdom of God. And best of all, the love of Christ possessed and permeated everything. |
Brook Street Chapel today
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A baptistry was constructed under the floor of the Meeting House. Associated with the chapel were the philanthropist Thomas Barnardo, Philip Henry Gosse, who was married from Robert Howard’s house on Bruce Grove in 1848, (and was later portrayed by Edmund Gosse in Father and Son) and James Hudson Taylor, promoter of the China Inland Mission. The Chapel was thriving by 1840 with 140 attending services and by Census Sunday 1851, 140 in the morning and 120 in the evening. |
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Brook Street Chapel Tottenham Statement of 1849
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Brook Street Chapel, Register of Interments
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A schoolroom was built at the back of the chapel to mark its jubilee and an adjoining room for youth-work was put up in 1955.
The land to the side of the chapel is the burial ground for Brook Street Chapel, and full records were kept of all baptisms, members and deaths. Register of Interments in the Burial Ground attached to Brook Street Chapel from the opening in 1841 to closure in 1858 signed by John Eliot Howard, Minister, son of Luke Howard. |
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From sometime in 1880 until 1903 assemblies took place in the first public lecture hall which had been built by William Janson on the west side of High Road, north of Bruce Grove. The Lecture Hall was used by Presbyterians and then by Congregationalists in the 1860s . It was renamed Bruce Grove Hall in 1880, when the Brethren began to worship there while Sunday school classes were held in the chapel. 
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A view of Tottenham’s Lecture Hall drawn by A. Waterhouse, J. Bell, Architect. Image: Grosvenor Prints
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