This church is to be found in the pedestrian shopping precinct known as Lion Walk in the city centre. It is a curious mixture of a very modern church is largely on the first floor above the shops and a traditional looking stone tower at the front which occupies once side of the precinct walkway in the middle.
It has a very interesting history. In the mid-17th century part of the garden of the nearby Red Lion Inn was purchased by Non-Conformist Protestants and an octagonal wooden building called the Round Meeting House was built here. This was demolished in 1863 and replaced with a Victorian Gothic-style church which included the tower and steeple that we still see today. Its steeple was damaged in a storm and in 1884 by the Essex earthquake which measured 4.6 on the Richter scale and is considered to be most severe recorded in UK with shocks felt for a radius of 180 miles.
By 1940 the church had begun to deteriorate and in 1972 it became part of the newly-created United Reformed Church and was demolished. The current church was then built as part of the development of the new shopping precinct here. It was allowed to be built on the condition that the steeple and tower were kept.
On the wall of the shops near the entrance to the church is an information board which has a copy of part of the 4th-century Roman mosaic found here in 1974 during the construction of the shopping centre. The mosaic was found underneath Lion Walk which was previously a medieval lane which extended southwards from the rear of the Red Lion Yard behind the inn of the same name. It was originally known as Cat Lane, so the presence under the street of a Roman mosaic showing à walking lion is a coincidence, or is it…
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