List of places of worship in Portsmouth
Download coordinates as: The English port city of Portsmouth has a wide variety of places of worship representing many Christian denominations and other faith groups.
There were 102 in the city: 77 churches, chapels, halls and meeting rooms for various Christian groups, three mosques, a synagogue and a gurdwara were in use, and a further 20 buildings no longer serve a religious function but survive in alternative uses.
Portsmouth is in the southeast of the traditional and ceremonial county of Hampshire, although it is now administered as a separate unitary authority; it spreads across the whole of Portsea Island and on to the mainland to the north, and is the most densely populated city in the United Kingdom.
[9] The great expansion of the city's population in the 19th and early 20th centuries prompted the construction of many new Anglican churches and mission halls across the whole island.
The "beautiful and sensitive" restoration of the Church of the Holy Spirit in the 1950s[note 2] brought the 150-year era of intensive churchbuilding in the city to an end: as congregations and financial resources have reduced, more churches have closed[13] or been replaced by smaller buildings (as at St Mark's, North End)[14] or adapted into multi-purpose community facilities (as at St Cuthbert's, Copnor).
[15] In the 18th century, Portsea Island's few Roman Catholics travelled to Gosport to attend Mass, crossing Portsmouth Harbour in a rowing boat,[16] or to Havant.
[17] Two years later a mission dedicated to Our Lady and St Swithun was founded in Southsea, and a tin tabernacle was erected to serve as a chapel of ease.
[29] As in many other parts of the country, the three main branches of Methodism were represented: in 1910, the 20 chapels within the city boundaries consisted of 12 for Wesleyans and four each for Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians.
[30] John Wesley visited Portsmouth 22 times in the 38 years from 1753, both to encourage the spread of Wesleyanism and to "control [the] rapidly expanding organisation" as it began to grow at pace in the city.
[note 4][33] Portsmouth was also one of the most important locations in Southern England for Bible Christians from the time they first became established in the early 1820s.
[35] The Primitive Methodist movement was never as strong, but their Jubilee Chapel of 1861 survives as a Pentecostal church[36] and their building at Eastney was taken over by an Evangelical congregation.
[37] Baptists have been established in Portsmouth for even longer than Methodists: the earliest meeting house was founded in 1698 with help from the cause in Gosport.
[39] The congregation of London Road Baptist Chapel (1902), also in North End,[40] joined this church after their building closed in the early 21st century.
[40] Another 19th-century chapel on Commercial Road[41] in the city centre was succeeded by the Baptist Tabernacle in suburban Copnor in 1921;[43] this was in turn replaced by a new building on the same site in 1937,[44] but the church now has no denominational links.
[48] In the early 18th century, doctrinal disagreement over the Trinity led to a group of Baptists seceding and forming a Unitarian congregation[38] which still survives.
Meetings take place at a converted house in Hilsea, which replaced a tin tabernacle near Fratton used earlier in the 20th century.
[54] Seventh-day Adventists worship in a former Anglican mission hall in North End; their former church became a Sikh gurdwara in the 1970s.
[49] Jehovah's Witnesses have worshipped locally since the early 20th century, but their first permanent Kingdom Hall in Southsea dates from 1951[51] and was supplemented by another in Copnor (registered in 1969).
[65] Shia and Sunni Muslim groups have lived in the city for many years[66] and a house in Southsea was registered for worship in 1978.
[48] The Sikh community in Portsmouth became established after World War II and has grown steadily since then, although a much larger group of worshippers exists in Southampton where a former Anglican church has been converted into a gurdwara.
[73] Cosham Baptist Church now occupies a postwar pub called Uncle Tom's Cabin which stood next to the original chapel but which closed in the 1990s.
[46] Two of the city's former cinemas have been converted into places of worship: as well as the Plaza, now occupied by Portsmouth Jame Mosque,[69] the former Grand Cinema on Arundel Street near the city centre is now the Oasis Centre (home of Oasis Church, an Elim Pentecostal congregation).
The Cathedral parish covers Portsmouth city centre, the Naval Dockyard and the coastline as far as Clarence Esplanade in Southsea, Somers Town, parts of Fratton and Landport.
[80] The parish of North End, Corpus Christi and Copnor, St Joseph covers the whole of Portsea Island north of this; from Fratton railway station eastwards the southern boundary is Goldsmith Avenue, Milton Park, Warren Avenue and the southern edge of Milton Common.
