Marton Primitive Methodist chapel

The 1851 religious census records a Primitive Methodist chapel in this village with sittings for 80 people and an attendance of 44 at the evening service but no Sunday School. The form was filled in by George Warner, travelling preacher from Leamington.

The chapel was built for the Congregationalists in 1833 and rebuilt in 1866. Leamington circuit records show that the Primitive Methodists were talking to Mr Sibree about using it in 1850, and this is confirmed by Sibree & Caston: ‘for some time past the Primitive Methodists, having stations in the vicinity, have been allowed to occupy the chapel at Marton’.

The Primitive Methodist congregation was part of the Leamington Circuit. The chapel appears in Warwickshire trade directories as Congregational from the 1880s onwards). Warwickshire Ordnance Survey maps label the chapel Wesleyan in the 1880s (though a local historian thinks this was a mistake) and Congregational in the 1900s.

Sources:

1851 religious census for Warwickshire, HO 129.401.3.10.18;

Warwickshire County Record Office: CR1688/46, Circuit Minutes 18^th Sept. 1850, p. 26;

Sibree & Caston ‘Independency in Warwickshire’ 1855, p. 361;

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