A Congregational Church may have been founded in Thame around 1750; certainly a new congregation was formed in 1821, probably at the east end of Middle Row. A new chapel was opened in October 1827, with William Henry Wiffen as minister, and became part of the new Oxfordshire & West Berkshire Association in 1841. The chapel was recorded as "Independent or Congregational Chapel" in the 1851 religious census. In 1871 a larger chapel was built in Upper High Street for "Protestant Dissenters of the Congregational Denomination called Independents being Paedobaptists". It became part of the United Reformed Church in 1972, and joined with the Methodists to form the United Church in Thame in the same year.
For more information on the early history of Congregationalism in Thame, see document NC2/C/1. For further records of the United Church in Thame, see Thame & Watlington Methodist Circuit catalogue (NM3).
This collection of documents was deposited by the Methodist minister in Thame in November 1998, as part of accession 4422.
Catalogued by Mark Priddey, December 1998.