The Circus Church

Portsmouth has never been short of churches and has an intriguing religious history. One of the oddest elements has to be the Circus Church. The name derives from Hengler’s Equestrian Circus whose wooden building was used for the first mission services. It stood in Lion Gate Road, now Edinburgh Road, until a permanent chapel, which could seat an impressive 1700, was built in Surrey Street in 1863. To add to its strangeness, this evangelical church had no set parish and was privately owned by a Board of Trustees. It had a widely varying congregation including the Victorian reformer Agnes Weston. The church, like so many others, was badly damaged in the Blitz and finally demolished in the 1950s.