The Hospital Church
The 1828 lunacy act ordered daily prayers and a weekly divine service in all asylums. Initially the patients at Chester untilised the recreational hall for this purpose until, in 1853, the church was built, to the rear of the 1829 building. A full-time chaplain was appointed, the Rev. Ralph Congreve, and it was he who was instrumental in supporting the introduction of a school in 1862. Here patients took lessons in literacy.
In 1870 the Rev. Congreve and the medical superintendent set up a fund to financially assist patients upon their discharge. The chaplain and his wife both died during a typhoid outbreak in 1879.

The church is the only listed building on the hospital site and has been renovated for patient and staff recreational and physical educational use.

It has Gothic features and inside there is a nave, sanctuary, two porches, and vestry. Owing to the cost of repairs, in the late 1980's, the bell turret no longer houses the bell which was once a feature of the old hospital. It's chimes would ring out across the grounds and many a patient took solace from it during the long hours of the night.
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