Originally meeting in hired premises in Little Clarendon Street, then at New Inn Hall Street, in 1851 the congregation moved to a former schoolroom in Paradise Square.
In 1872, they built a permanent chapel, designed by J C Curtis in St Michael’s Street. It closed in 1933, when the congregation merged with Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, a few hundred yards away.
This photograph from 1907 shows that the chapel entrance was flanked with lampstands proclaiming it to be the United Methodist Free Church chapel.
The Paradise Square and St Michael’s Street Chapels were the central chapels of the United Methodist Free and United Methodist Circuits.
The city council purchased the St Michael’s Street building in 1933, when it became known as the Northgate Hall.
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The Chapels Society Newsletter 86, November 2023, contains the news that this building is currently being restored to religious use, by Quinlan Terry Architects, for the Oxford Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Others may have more information, and indeed photographs of this restoration.
A photograph exists of the interior of the St. Michael’s Street chapel, taken just after the building was vacated in 1933
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/item/OP00755
It seems to have been a splendid building.
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