Emmanuel United Reformed Church
A Grade II listed Congregational church of 1875 on Trumpington Street, home to a congregation founded in 1687 until it closed in 2020.
Emmanuel United Reformed Church was a Grade II listed church on Trumpington Street, put up in 1875 from plans by James Cubitt. The congregation held its final service there on 26 July 2020, and church life at the building has ended. This page records what the church was.
A congregation from 1687
Emmanuel's roots go back to 1687, when a group began meeting as the Cambridge "Great Meeting" at Hog Hill. That first building occupied the plot in Downing Place that the Old Music School now covers. Joseph Hussey was the minister from 1691, and he is among the figures commemorated in glass in the apse of the church building, a group that also took in Milton, Cromwell, Holcroft, Barrow and Greenwood. In 1790 a new chapel opened on the same site as Emmanuel Congregational Chapel, and in 1874 the congregation moved to Trumpington Street. From 1881 the vacated chapel was a laboratory for the University's women science students, the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women. A vote in 1972 took Emmanuel into the United Reformed Church.
What happened next
In its last years the church offered Sunday worship, a fairtrade cafe, lunchtime music recitals and a part in a churches' homeless project, and the Open Table Network's Cambridge branch was founded there in July 2018. That year Emmanuel joined St Columba's Church to create Downing Place United Reformed Church, whose home is the old St Columba's building. Pembroke College bought the Trumpington Street building; it lies across the road from the college, which intended to use it for lectures and performances as part of the Mill Lane redevelopment. It is best seen from the street.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
