Religious refugees from Moravia in Slovakia, the United Brethren first arrived in Bedford in about 1742. An evangelical sect, the group found acceptance in Bedford and had acquired the site of the Moravian Chapel on St Peter's Street by 1749, to use as a meeting house. The property owned by the Brethren expanded to include the buildings pictured in the lithograph by Bradford Rudge above. They were used to house and educate members of the Brethren and the land behind to bury them. The Chapel shown in Fisher's watercolour, and as the second building in from the left, in Rudge's lithograph was demolished  in the early 1860s. The structure that stands today is the 1864-65 Victorian replacement.