Westminster Chapel

All bookings are at the discretion of the Methodist Chaplain, and other parties may be consulted, including the University Chaplain, the Oxford Methodist Circuit, and the Westminster College Oxford Trust. Please allow plenty of time.

• Staff and students wishing to use the chapel should contact the Multifaith Chaplaincy (chaplaincy@brookes.ac.uk) to discuss your needs.
• External bookings will be considered. Please contact the Multifaith Chaplaincy (chaplaincy@brookes.ac.uk) to discuss your needs. There may be a cost for using the chapel.

The Westminster Chapel is named after Westminster College (later Westminster Institute of Education), which was a Methodist foundation specialising in teacher education and theology. It was founded in Westminster in 1851, before being moved to the current site in Oxford in the 1950s. Westminster College became part of Oxford Brookes University in 2000 as the Westminster Institute of Education and is now the Harcourt Hill Campus. Education teaching is still focused on this campus, as well as a few other courses in Humanities and Social Sciences. Many ‘Old Westminsterians’ still visit the campus and share wonderful memories of their time studying here.

The Chapel dates to the 1950s when the college moved to Oxford. The chapel sits on the east side of a quad, designed to be sympathetic to the designs of colleges of the University of Oxford, and its distinctive design reflects much earlier Methodist chapels on the east coast of the USA.

The war memorials in the Chapel vestibule commemorate the members of Westminster College who died in the First and Second World Wars. You might like to take some time to look closely at the stained glass windows, which are also dedicated to people who contributed to the life and flourishing of the college.

To learn more about Methodism and the history of Westminster College, please visit the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History (OCMCH), which continues the tradition of Methodist scholarship on Harcourt Hill.