St Mary de Crypt is one of Gloucester's older surviving churches, first recorded in 1140, and it sits on Southgate Street among the medieval layers of the city centre. The building has been altered many times over the centuries but retains Norman fabric in its walls and a crypt that gives it its name.
The church has a particular significance in the history of evangelicalism: George Whitefield, the eighteenth-century preacher who was one of the founders of Methodism and an enormously influential figure in colonial America, was baptised here in 1714 and gave his first sermon here in 1736. There is a memorial to him in the church. Whitefield's open-air preaching style, developed partly in response to being excluded from Anglican churches, shaped American Protestant religious culture in ways that are still felt today.
The church is on Southgate Street, Gloucester. Check local listings for opening times.