| Castle Gate Congregational Centre | |
| Denomination: | Formerly Congregational now Independent |
Castle Gate Congregational Centre is in Nottingham. It is a Grade II listed building.
The congregation formed in the 1650s. The first meeting house on Castle Gate was established in 1689 under the Act of Toleration.[1]
The present building was erected in 1863 to designs by the architect Richard Charles Sutton,[2] and opened for worship in 1864. The congregation suffered from some embarrassment in 1866 when Henry Walter Wood, local architect and surveyor petitioned for divorce from his wife on the grounds of her adultery with George Eaton Stanger, surgeon and a deacon of the Chapel. The trial in 1867 lasted three days and was widely reported in the National press. Wood was awarded £3,000 from Stanger in damages.[3]
In 1972 the congregation joined the United Reformed Church and three years later merged with St. Andrew's United Reformed Church, Goldsmiths Street. In 1980 the congregational federation purchased the buildings back again.
In 2010, the El Shaddai International Christian Centre took out a 5-year lease on the building.[4]
The church was successful and spawned other churches, including:[5]
The new church of 1864 had a new organ constructed in 1865 by Forster and Andrews for £449 (equivalent to £ in). This was sold to Hyson Green United Reformed Church in 1908.
The church obtained the current organ in 1909. It had been constructed for Councillor George E. Franklin at his house, The Field, in Derby in 1903. It was by James Jepson Binns and cost about £3,500 (equivalent to £ in).