“PERCY MAIN. – The first chapel was erected in 1829 at a cost of £100, and the story of its erection is a proof of the loyalty and devotion of its early members. A considerable number of members devoted their leisure to assisting to build the chapel, and others secured the loan of waggons, and brought the stones “down the line” from a quarry four miles away. This chapel was enlarged in 1867. Since then a new schoolroom, with a splendid suite of class-rooms, and afterwards a new chapel, have been built at an expenditure of over £3,000.”
The 1884 Primitive Methodist magazine records the laying of the foundation stones for the new Percy Main Primitive Methodist chapel in the North Shields Station. Friends were “sanguine and hopeful” about it.
Early Twentieth Century Ordnance Survey maps show two Methodist chapels of unidentified denomination within spitting distance of each other to the west of St John’s church – one on Burdon Street and one on St John’s Street. The whole area has been redeveloped since.
References
Christian Messenger 1908/217
Primitive Methodist magazine 1884 page 316
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Percy Main, Middle Row,
Primitive Methodist Chapel 1
NZ34036721
The Primitive Methodist Society began in 1821. In 1822, when William Clowes preached in the village, there were 18 members. The chapel was built in 1829. The Primitive Methodist congregation left around 1884 when a new chapel was built on Backworth Street. The original chapel on Middle Row is shown as a ‘Christians’ Meeting House’ on OS maps up to 1956.
Percy Main, Backworth Street,
Primitive Methodist Chapel 2
NZ33666720
Built around 1884. The 1897 OS shows a chapel facing west to Backworth Street with an empty site to the east. This seems to become the Sunday School to a later (1902) building facing Burdon Street on the east. Demolished.
Percy Main, Burdon Street,
Primitive Methodist Chapel 3
NZ33706721
Built in 1902. Seated 300 people. Cost ‘something under £2000’. Gothic gabled front with large traceried window above porch, between octagonal pinnacles. Demolished in 1974.
Source: Peter F Ryder, 2012, Nonconformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in Newcastle & North Tyneside
Thanks for the clarification Richard
Burdon Street was the PM chapel, St. John’s Street was the Wesleyan. The two Societies amalgamated in 1956. In 1974 the Methodists amalgamated with the Anglican Church
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