Newington Green Unitarian Church

After the end of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth and the Restoration of Charles II, those in England and Wales who were not members of the Church of England found themselves in an uncomfortable position. Several pieces of legislation, known collectively as the Clarendon Code, made their lives difficult. The first restricted public office to Anglicans. The Act of Uniformity the following year was a step too far for many clergymen, and about 2,000 of them left the established church in the Great Ejection of 1662. The third act forbad unauthorised religious meetings of more than five people. The final one prohibited Nonconformist clergymen from living within five miles of a parish from which…

The original building of 1708 was financed with £300, , from Edward Harrison, a goldsmith. He leased it to the trustees of the congregation, who furnished it with pulpit, pews, and so on, raising the necessary £96 from about 20 subscribers, primarily by hiring or selling pews. It was a "substantial brick building, of nearly square form, with the high, tiled, projecting roof, common at its era", "Historic views show that the original façade had a small pediment against a large hipped roof, with a central oval window below." It was too plain for Wollstonecraft's Anglican tastes, and one of her biographers thought it defiantly stark. This building was substantially extended and improved in the…