(White) Gritt (sometimes spelled with one t) Primitive Methodist chapel was opened in 1865 and at the time of Keith Guyler’s photograph in 2000 was still in use.
Shropshire online archive includes an account of camp meetings in the area with a class ticket found in a Primitive Methodist hymn book. “Each chapel in the old Minsterley Circuit (originally 13)had its own Camp Meeting, where there were three or four preachers, standing on a lorry or farm wagon, and the congregation, singing lustily, paraded around the area to the chosen “camp ground.” The Perkins Beach chapel in Stipersones village, the Grit chapel at the foot of Corndon and Hyssington chapel, right on the Welsh border (all in the combined Marches Circuit) have been the only local ones to continue the custom in recent years. … The Grit’s Camp meeting has a memorable location – the lawn of a house with the name of Giant’s Cave.“
You can read more about the chapel on Shropshire’s Non-Conformist Chapels
Reference
Shropshire online archive accessed March 19th 2015
Comments about this page
I’ve added a picture of the chapel in 2023 from Rhoda Farrington. Thanks Rhoda.
It’s notable how little has changed in the chapel – and the surroundings.
Yes please to the photograph Liz; please email it to info@myprimitivemethodists.org.uk and we’ll add it to the page. Thanks too for the memories of Camp Meeting Sunday.
I have a card, produced for the Chapel opening, priced 6d, with a poem written for the occasion by my g.g.grandmother. I could send a photo? I also have books presented to my grandmother and her sister for attendance at Sunday school there. The camp meetings described might explain something my Grandmother used to say which made no sense to me at the time. Every summer, with Grandma, we would pick whinberries on the Stiperstones, There weren’t many ready at the beginning of July but Grandma would say we could pick ‘enough for a pie for Camp Sunday’. I think this was the first Sunday in July.
Thanks for the information Janice. We are just getting to 1866 in our trawl through Primitive Methodist magazines!
Shrewsbury Chronicle, 23 June 1865, page 5, “GRIT MINES. On Monday last the foundation stone of a new Primitive Methodist Chapel was laid at the above place by Miss Farmer, of the Down. An address was delivered by the Rev. J. Webster of Congleton to a large concourse of people. A collection was made on the ground, which amounted to £16 15s. 1d. A tea meeting was held in a large tent, kindly lent by Mr. Frances, of Clun, when 300 persons were accommodated. Several ministers and friends address the meeting. The chair was occupied by J. Jones, Esq., of Llandyssil.”
Primitive Methodist Magazine, June 1866, p. 365, “At the Grit we have built a good substantial chapel, which has cost about £180, and which is the only place of worship in the neighbourhood. The work of conversion is going on gloriously.”
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