Great Meeting Unitarian Chapel

One of the earliest surviving brick buildings in Leicester

Built in 1708 as a “Meeting House of Protestant Dissenters”, the Great Meeting is the earliest example of a major brick building in Leicester.

An important organisation for Leicester

Non-Conformists (Christians who refused to “conform” to the Church of England and so set up their own churches) held considerable political and economic power in Victorian Leicester. Unitarians were Non-Conformist and became one of the most important and influential groups in the town with the congregation of the Great Meeting providing Leicester with many of its leading thinkers.

The first seven mayors of the town following municipal reform in 1835 were all Unitarians, thus earning the chapel the nickname of the “Mayor´s Nest”. The first was Thomas Paget, a supporter of “peace, reform and religious liberty”.

The Chapel interior

Other Unitarians who made great contributions to the political, economic and cultural life of Leicester included John Biggs (the town´s largest hosiery manufacturer), businessman John Mason Cook (Thomas Cook´s son), composer William Gardiner (said to have ensured Leicester was the first place in England to hear Beethoven´s music) and Joseph Fielding Johnson (who helped to establish Leicester University).

Active in social reform, Unitarians established the Leicester Domestic Mission to aid the poor as well as the Mechanics Institute, the Literary and Philosophical Society and the Archaeological Society, which laid the foundations of our modern museums.

The congregation today

Today a number of members of the congregation are very active in public and political life.

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