A Comprehensive List of Bath Abbey's Chapels and District Chapels

Here is a list of all those chapels of ease, district and parochial chapels attached to and standing within the parish boundary of Bath Abbey St Peter and St Paul (registers from 1569); see also the parochial parish of Walcot St Swithin whose boundary (and chapelries) also lay within the City of Bath:


 * Kensington Chapel - 1795
 * Margaret Chapel - 1773
 * The Octagon Chapel, Milsom Street - 1767
 * Portland Chapel abt 1840
 * St James, with Lyncombe and Widcombe - 1569
 * St Michael - 1569
 * St Mary's Chapel Queen-Square - 1735
 * Walcot All Saints' Lansdown Place - 1794
 * Walcot Avon Street Chapel - by 1825
 * Walcot Christ Church - 1798
 * Walcot [Holy] Trinity Church - 1840
 * Walcot St Saviour, Lambridge - 1832
 * Walcot St Stephen Lansdown -1845
 * Walcot St Swithin - 1691
 * Widcombe St Matthews - 1847
 * Widcombe St Thomas a Becket - 1574

There are three places of worship for Wesleyans, two for Baptists, and one each for the Society of Friends, the Connexion of the Countess of Huntingdon, Independents, Moravians, and Unitarians; also two Roman Catholic chapels.

Bath is the head of a diocese comprising very nearly the whole of the county of Somerset; the income of the bishop is £5000. The parish of St. Peter and St. Paul, or the Abbey parish, and the parish of St. James, form a rectory, with the vicarage of Lyncombe and Widcombe (which see) annexed: the living is valued in the king's books at £20. 17. 11.; net income, £750; patrons, the Trustees of the Rev. Charles Simeon. The Abbey church is a venerable and finely proportioned cruciform structure, in the later English style, of which it forms one of the purest specimens: from the intersection an irregularly quadrilateral tower rises to the height of 162feet. It occupies the site, and is built partly with the materials, of the conventual church of the monastery founded by Osric in 676,which had subsisted, under different forms of government, for more than 800 years. This church having become dilapidated, Bishop Oliver King (as it is said, admonished in a dream, of which a memorial is sculptured on the west front,) began to rebuild it in 1495; but dying before it was completed, and the citizens refusing to purchase it from the commissioners of Henry VIII., the walls were left roofless, till Dr. James Montague, bishop of the diocese, aided by a liberal contribution from the nobility and gentry resident in the county, completed it, in the year 1606. The revenue of the monastery, at the Dissolution, was £695. 6. 1¼. The edifice has now, as before noticed, undergone a thorough repair and embellishment at the expense of the corporation; but not in accordance with the simplicity of its original style of architecture. St. James's church, rebuilt in 1768, is an elegant structure in the later English style. The Octagon chapel, in Milsom street, was erected in 1767, and is much admired: the living is in the patronage of the Rev. G. G. Gardiner. The living of the parish of St. Michael was until recently annexed to the Abbey rectory; but is now a distinct rectory, with a net income of £182: the church, rebuilt in 1835, is of early English character, with a lofty and well-proportioned spire of great beauty.