Church Building Act

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Domains

Church of England (Anglicans)
Legislation (Bills, Acts, Laws ...)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1824

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the transformations of the Industrial Revolution started to make themselves felt, as the population of many urban areas rose dramatically. The provision of parish churches did not match this new distribution of people, and some cities (including Manchester, Sheffield, Stockport and parts of London) had nowhere near enough space in their existing churches for the number of people in the area. As a result, the government passed a Church Building Act in 1818, and another in 1824, giving first £1 million and then an additional £500 000 to allow new churches to be built. The government hoped that this would also aid in preventing revolutionary uprisings, since the French Revolution was seen as caused partly by a wave of atheism and ungodliness.

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

125 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Church Building Act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4606, accessed 05 May 2024.]

Save this article