Bugby Chapel

Bugby Chapel is an 18th-century former chapel in the centre of Epsom, a suburban town in Surrey, England. Known by this name in reference to its Calvinistic founder William Bugby, it was also known as East Street Chapel and later, as it passed into the ownership of different religious groups, as Salem Unitarian Chapel, Salem Baptist Chapel and the Epsom and District Synagogue. More than 200 years of religious use ended when it was converted into an office. The chapel is a Grade II Listed building.

Epsom became a fashionable town in the 18th century, popular with businesspeople and wealthy merchants from London who wanted to live in a country town within easy reach of the city. Protestant Nonconformism emerged in the town soon after the Act of Uniformity 1662, when covert Presbyterian meetings took place; a chapel was built in 1724, and hundreds of worshippers attended. It was an era in which congregations frequently split and new churches were formed in accordance with the views of their ministers, and such a secession occurred in the 1770s when William Bugby, a preacher with strong Calvinistic views, came to Epsom. He was influenced by the well-known ultra-Calvinist William Huntington, who moved to Ewell in 1775 after experiencing a religious conversion and held meetings there. Bugby took out certificates for the registration of religious meeting houses in Epsom in 1777 and 1778.

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