PLYMOUTH |
The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History |
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Mrs Mary Knox Briggs of Down House at Derriford died in 1870 and in 1895 the trustees of her will sold 'a piece of land together with a new mission church erected thereon' to a Miss Hariette Mary Jane Halloran for £150. Exactly how "new" the mission church was is not known, only that it was called the Down House Mission, although that name may date from when Miss Halloran took over. Two months later Miss Halloran had a trust deed drawn up under which the land and church was given as 'a Sunday School for children and adults or children only of the working and other poorer classes residing in or near the parish of Tamerton Foliot as and for a chapel or place of holding religious services; as a place of meeting for religious or charitable societies; for the purposes of any bazaar or entertainment held in conjunction with the said parish and for any other religious purposes whatsoever. Any religious service that is held in the said mission church or room shall be of a helpful character and of a Protestant and evangelical character.' Miss Halloran died in 1912. For more than fifty years, apart from during the Second World War, the small, wooden mission hall was used for undenominational worship but in 1953 it found itself without a leader and applied to join one of the main religious bodies. Thanks mainly to the efforts of the Reverend F E Quick, the minister at Sherwell Congregational Chapel, it reopened as the Derriford Congregational Chapel on Wednesday September 7th 1955. It started with eight people but by 1964 the congregation had risen, like the local population, to eighty. In 1972 the Congregationalists joined forces with the Presbyterian Church of England and became the United Reform Church.
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