List of places of worship in Reigate and Banstead
Download coordinates as: The borough of Reigate and Banstead, one of 11 local government districts in the English county of Surrey, has more than 80 current and former places of worship.
English Heritage has awarded listed status to 11 places of worship in the borough of Reigate and Banstead.
[5] Reigate and Banstead is one of 11 local government areas in Surrey, an inland county in southeast England immediately south of London.
Situated in the eastern part of the county, it covers 12,913 acres (5,226 ha) and had a population of 137,835 at the time of the United Kingdom Census 2011.
[7] The borough is mostly urban or suburban in nature and has four main towns: Horley in the south, Redhill and neighbouring Reigate in the centre, and Banstead in the northwest.
[7][10][11] Of the larger villages, Merstham's ancient origins are still visible, but it became a centre for quarrying in the 18th and 19th centuries and a major housing estate was built in the 1950s.
[12] Kingswood is characterised by "leafy suburban surroundings",[13] while Tadworth saw much interwar and postwar housing growth.
[21] Gatton—a tiny hamlet dominated by the Gatton Park estate, and for many years a famous rotten borough—was recorded in the Domesday survey of 1086 as having a church, and some old fabric remains.
The growth of the main towns in the Victorian era and into the 20th century prompted the building of many more Anglican churches.
A church once existed in Burgh Heath in Banstead parish, but as early as 1725 "no service [had] been held there within living memory" and the last traces of it disappeared in the late 19th century.
The latter, opened as a mission church in 1891 by Cosmo Bonsor,[27] is a remarkable Byzantine-style building decorated with many types of marble and with remains taken from ancient sites in the Near and Middle East.
[27][28] More modest Anglican churches were provided in the early 20th century at Tadworth (originally in Kingswood parish)[27] in 1912[29] and Nork (1930),[30] and in the Victorian era at Sidlow (1861)[31] and South Merstham (1898).
Nearby, the Church of the Epiphany was founded in 1955 on a housing estate built by London County Council near Merstham railway station,[32] and in the same year St Peter's Church was built to serve housing development south of Reigate town centre.
[46] A similar thing happened in Horley, where the original Church of the English Martyrs on Ladbroke Road (registered for marriages in 1941)[47] was superseded in 1962 by a new building on Vicarage Lane.
Charles Spurgeon helped to found the General Baptist cause there, and a town-centre chapel (1868) was superseded by the present building in 1961.
[49] Meanwhile, Strict Baptists have chapels at Station Road in Redhill town centre and Shaw's Corner at the Reigate border.
[52] Congregations of Methodists still meet in Banstead, Horley, Redhill and Reigate, but only the last named still occupy their original chapel (erected in 1884).
