Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapels 1825, 1852 and 1895
Wood Street and Front Street
The Return from Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapel in the 1851 Census of Places of Public Religious Worship submitted by John Brodie shows that Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodists were at that time using a chapel built in 1825.
The Primitive Methodist magazine for February 1852 contains an account by A Dodds of the laying of the foundation stone for a new Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapel in Wood Street.
The stone was laid by Rev W Lister of Hexham on Monday November 24th 1851. At the ceremony, the following tea for 250 people in the Music Hall and the evening public meeting, sermons were preached by Rev, W Salt (Wesleyan), Rev W Lefevre (Baptist), G Charlton (Newcastle), J Charlton, B Stokoe (Blayden) and G Blackey and T Carrick of Shotley Bridge. Mrs Wrighton and female friends raised funds through a sewing basket.
The chapel was replaced by a new one on Front Street in 1894. The laying of the memorial stones on a site purchased some years previously is recorded in the Primitive Methodist magazine of October 1894. They waited until they had paid off the debt on the land before starting building. The new chapel was expected to cost £2,000 of which they had already raised over half. This chapel building still exists, although the society merged in 2014 with Blackhill Methodist Church on Durham Road. It is now called the Blackhill & Shotley Bridge Uniting Methodist Church
You can read more about the growth of Methodism in Shotley Bridge here.
Reference
Brief History of Shotley Bridge Methodist Church accessed 27/01/2017 at https://sbvt.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/shotley-bridge-methodist-church-1894-2004.pdf
Primitive Methodist magazine February 1852 p.114
Primitive Methodist magazine October 1894 page 797
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Thanks to Pat Donnor for providing photographs of the Front Street chapel.
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