The original settlers in Guildford were pagan Saxons and would have been converted to Christianity during the 7th century. They very probably built a wooden church at first, on the site of St. Mary’s: a stone tower was built before the Norman Conquest and the rest of the present church in the early Middle Ages. It is probable that St. Nicholas was founded before 1066, and Holy Trinity almost certainly dates from the 10th century, as the parish boundary carefully follows the tenements laid out along the High Street. Regrettably, both Holy Trinity and St. Nicholas have been rebuilt since the Middle Ages, and no early work survives to date them. The larger part of the parish of St. Nicholas (Artington) lay outside the borough, but nevertheless, the three churches could easily have accommodated the entire population of the town up to the 18th century.

Religion played a central role in medieval life and the clergy were numerous. Besides parish priests, there were chantry priests, paid by bequests to pray for the souls of the dead. The land left by Henry Norbrygde in the early 16th century to support a priest at Holy Trinity is still known as The Chantries. Lay people would form associations or ‘guilds’ for religious – or social – purposes: the guilds of Jesus and of Corpus Christi were attached to St. Mary’s church for example. In the late 12th century a hospital dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr was founded at the junction of the London and Epsom Roads. Many such hospitals had a partly communal life with regular religious observances. It started as a leper hospital, but probably cared for the poor, aged and sick when leprosy died out in England in the 15th century. From 1275 Dominican friars were based in Guildford, begging for their living, hearing confessions, and above all preaching, both in the church and outdoors. They were also involved in teaching: there may have been a School of Theology at the Guildford Friary for clergymen, and possibly boys were taught as well.

Education continued to have a religious basis after the Reformation: the Grammar School, re-endowed by Edward VI, was intended to bring up boys in the Protestant faith. Guildford, like many towns associated with the wool trade, had strongly Protestant sympathies. Maurice Abbot, a cloth worker and his wife were persecuted during Mary’s reign when an attempt was made to restore Catholicism. Their son grew up to be an Archbishop of Canterbury with decidedly Puritan views. Protestant sects proliferated during the 16th and 17th centuries: a group known as ‘the Family of Love’ were causing trouble in the area during the 1560s. There may have been a separatist meeting – a non-conformist church, in fact – in Guildford in 1594, and in 1695 members of a sect known as the ‘Sweet Singers of Israel’, led by one Jacob Taylor in Guildford, were pilloried and sent to prison. During the Civil War the rector of St. Nicholas was removed – ‘ejected’ – because he disapproved of sermons, which were dear to the hearts of the Puritans, and because he favoured elaborate church ritual, which was emphatically not.

The Restoration saw the official repression of non-conformity in the town but the sects continued to flourish. The Guildford Quakers were persecuted and imprisoned in 1660 and others were dismissed from positions in the corporation. However, from 1673 they had a permanent meetinghouse at the end of the gate of the Crown Inn what is now Quaker’s Acre. The present meetinghouse in Ward Street was built in 1903. A dissenting chapel was built in what is now Chapel Street in about 1690. It became a Congregational Chapel early in the 18th century and became a Sunday school when the Congregational Chapel was built in North Street in 1863. The North Street chapel was demolished in 1964. By 1774 a Baptist Chapel had been set up at the end of Tunsgate, known as the Charcoal Barn Chapel, as it was at first held in the barn used to store charcoal for blacksmiths’ forges. Another Baptist Chapel was built in Commercial Road in 1850 but demolished in 1974. The Charcoal Barn Chapel went in 1954.

There were several smaller sects which flourished during the 19th century, such as the Calvinistic Independents, whose Providence Chapel was built in 1816 in Castle street. The Unitarians had a church in Ward Street from 1877 and the short-lived Catholic and Apostolic church was in North Street from 1850 until 1876. The Evangelistic Church is mentioned in 1880 and the Salvation Army came to Onslow Street in 1904.

Despite this non-conformist tradition the area around Surrey was known as ‘the Methodist wilderness’. It was not until 1844 that a Methodist Church was built in North Street, being rebuilt in 1894 and demolished in 1973.

After the Reformation few people in Guildford remained Roman Catholics – during the years of repression most would have worshipped at Sutton Place where the Weston family still clung to the old faith. A Roman Catholic chapel is mentioned in the town in 1801 but the first positive reference to one is in 1857, in hired rooms in the Upper High Street. A small church was built in Chertsey Street in 1860 and a larger one in 1881. This church, St. Joseph’s was knocked down in 1981, and a new church built at Foxenden Quarry.

The Church of England also expanded as the population of the town increased. Most of the new building of 19th century was to the north in the parish of Stoke, which had to be divided into smaller parishes to cope with the new corners. Christ Church in Waterden Road was built as a Chapel of Ease in 1868, becoming a parish church in 1936. St Saviour’s in Woodbridge Road was founded in 1876 and Emmanuel, Stoughton in 1881 – both these became ecclesiastical districts in 1893 and parishes in 1943, although St. Saviour’s has now merged back with Stoke. In 1927, the Diocese of Guildford was formed and Holy Trinity acted as the cathedral until the completion of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on Stag Hill in 1961.

Guildford Museum, Castle Arch, Guildford, Surrey

(01483) 444750

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