Planetslade have a thorough and well-written history of the Whitefield chapel and its burial grounds. In brief: Funded by his patron the Countess of Huntingdon (see Lady Erskine for more about her) in 1760 George Whitefield built his Tabernacle here, with burial grounds to north and south.
The Anglican church refused to consecrate this ground so after Whitefield’s death in 1770 his successor, Rev. Joss, took an unusual approach. A church, St Christopher-le-Stocks, next to the Bank of England was being demolished to allow an extension to the bank, so Joss arranged for “several cartloads” of earth to be transported from that consecrated churchyard to Tottenham Court Road. Later, when the status of the land became relevant, the Anglicans, not surprisingly, pointed out that that’s not the way it works. Something about this story doesn't ring quite true but we hope it is. Also it reminds us of the soil-related story about the George Washington statue.
The lease ran out in 1827 which caused the chapel some problems but by about 1860 the chapel bought its own site plus the burial ground to the south. However that to the north was sold to an unscrupulous businessman, Nathan Jacobson. He bought the land expecting to be able to develop it, but removing coffins and bodies was not a straightforward task and he repeatedly failed to do it in a manner the law found acceptable. He died intestate in 1881 and while the ownership of the land was disputed it was leased by a fairground operator who moved noisy machinery onto the site in 1887. The disruption this caused to the services in the Tabernacle led to complaints and legal proceedings that lasted until about 1890, when finally the LCC bought the land and landscaped it into a public garden with playground. The southern burial ground was treated in a similar fashion at about the same time.
The chapel was almost entirely destroyed by fire in February 1857. A new church, designed by John Tarring, was erected by the Congregational Society but in 1889 the foundations were found to be unsafe and a new building was opened in November 1899, named Whitefield’s Tabernacle or Whitefield’s Central Mission. This structure included, below the church, Toplady Hall, named for Reverend Augustus Toplady.
In WW2 the church was used as a hostel, and a deep level bomb shelter was built in the east section of the old northern burial ground. 25 March 1945 a V2 bomb destroyed the church and 5 houses directly south on Tottenham Court Road and the old Chapel Street, but left the, now, Café Nero relatively intact. A new church, the Whitefield Memorial Church, designed by E. C. Butler, was built in 1957 and the American Church moved in in 1972.
The history of the buildings on this site is complicated and we note that various details in the Wikipedia entry differ from those given at Planetslade. Planetslade provides clear original sources for their information so that's the source we have relied on. The London Metropolitan Archive also has some essential information, as does the American Church.
This drawing shows the Tabernacle c.1820. For images of all 4 churches that have been on this site see American Church.
In 2019 it was discovered that Olaudah Equiano was buried here.
