 Nottingham
St Gabriel’s Mission Church
History
St Gabriel’s Mission Church was opened in 1884 within the parish of St Saviour’s. It was located in the south-east part of the city in the area known then, as now, as The Meadows, on a green field site recently developed with mainly two-storey red brick terraced houses. The mission was built in response to the growing population of St Saviour’s parish which had been created only in 1863. The piece of land for the church was donated by the Misses Burnside of Radcliffe on Trent and the entire cost of the site and the iron building was met by Mr Henry Abel Smith and his family of Wilford, long established bankers in the city. The Nottingham Evening Post, reporting on the opening of the church on 7 December 1884, provides some information on the building:
'The new church seats 256 persons, and it has been erected by Mr. S. Naish of London. It is a very pretty, bright, and airy building. It is intended that there shall be strictly mission work carried on in it for the people of the immediate locality. There will be all the usual services of the Church of England, that is, without being full, they will be distinctively Church services. All the seats are free, and it is to be hoped that the people of the district will appreciate the effort that has been made for them, and avail themselves of the services. The expenses are proposed to be met by offertory boxes at the doors. For the present the work will be in charge of a lay reader.'
In 1894, during Bishop Hoskins’s visitation, it was recorded that the mission could seat 200 people, and had a Sunday School register of 292.
A new red brick Sunday School was built immediately south of the church 1909-1910. It was designed to accommodate 300 children and cost £300.
In 1954 the mission was closed, and for a few years was used by The Full Gospel Church. When they vacated the building it was sold. Purchased as an investment, it was used commercially, with the last tenant operating as a second-hand furniture dealer. It was demolished as part of the major redevelopment scheme in the late 1970s.
| 
