A house of the late 1820s at 27 Varden Street was replaced by this chapel in 1921–2. It was built for a Baptist congregation which had transferred from a condemned building in Alie Street to St Philip’s Institute in Newark Street in 1911. The chapel was built by Cornelius Midmer & Sons of Clapham, a contracting firm headed by a Baptist minister. Known as the Zoar Chapel, it was acquired by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1974. Houses to the east were demolished by the hospital to make way for the nurses’ residential quarter of 1969–76.1
www.fpchurch.org.uk/location/london-congregation: W. T. Whitley, The Baptists of London, 1612–1928, 1828, p.143: East London Observer, 23 Sept 1911: London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/AR/BR/22/ES/090592 ↩