Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapels 1825, 1852 and 1895

Wood Street and Front Street

former Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapel, Front Street
Pat Donnor June 2022
carved stonework on Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapel
Pat Donnor June 2022
Return from Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapel in the 1851 Census of Places of Public Religious Worship
transcribed by David Tonks 2020
The new name for the former Front Street chapel
Pat Donnor June 2022
Shotley Bridge Primitive Methodist chapels

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

 

Comments about this page

  • Thanks to Pat Donnor for providing photographs of the Front Street chapel.

    By Christopher Hill (01/12/2022)

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