History
Claremont Congregational Church has it’s origins in the faithfulness to God of one man, Thomas James Mathew, and the small group of ordinary people that gathered around him. In October, 1831, a month after his fourth child was born, he laid the foundation stone of Harfield Cottage, and under the stone he put a bottle containing a coin, a copy of the latest newspaper, and a letter – of which the following is an extract:
"In expressing his sentiments on this occasion he would desire ...(that) it might be the will of Heaven that these walls may never cease to echo the morning and evening praises of the Infinite Triune Jehovah, that the pure light penetrating the windows may never be closed against suffering humanity, or the shelter of its roof refused to the destitute or the oppressed, and forasmuch as he feels assured that this must afford him but a very temporary habitation, he would desire to be ever found looking forward to that house not made with hands eternal in the heavens, founding his hopes of its attainment exclusively on that precious, tried and chief Corner Stone laid for the foundation of a sinner's hope in the Gospel God has given in his Son.”
As part of his own devotional life Mathew built a rondavel on the property as a place of quietness and retreat, and it was here that he would teach the children Sunday School.
By 1840 Claremont had grown to the point where it was large enough to warrant the building of a church for people of the Protestant faith, but who did not belong to the Anglican faith. Therefore Mathew erected a larger building on his property, known as the Chapel, which was dedicated for worship on the 18th June 1840. This is the date that we recognize as the founding of our congregation. Every Sunday and Wednesday evening a service was held in the Chapel, mostly taken by Mathew. On Sunday mornings he would drive with his family to Cape Town to attend the service at the Union Chapel, of which he was a senior deacon, and then in the evening he would conduct the service in his own chapel, at times basing his sermon on the one he had heard that morning.
Many famous missionaries preached in that little chapel - Robert Moffat, Dr David Livingstone, and Dr. John Philip, of the London Missionary Society.
By the middle of the 1870’s the Claremont community had grown to such an extent that the Chapel was too small for the numbers attending, so once again it was decided to rebuild. In January 1876 Henry Mathew Arderne bought two sections of ground adjoining the land owned by his father, Ralph Henry Arderne. This land was on the opposite side of Main Road from the Chapel. On the 7th May 1877, Henry, his father Ralph and a brother in law, Henry Beard, entered into a contract to erect a Church at their joint expense on this ground. The price of the ground was 33 Pounds Sterling, and the cost of building the Church was 350 Pounds Sterling. The new Church was formally opened at an evening service on Friday, 9th November 1877. Since then there have been two major alterations to the Church building – the first was in 1892 when the two transepts and an entrance porch were added, and then in 1964 when the west transept was extended to provide seating for a further 70 people.