Goodbye to that College in Didsbury ............ part four a link with Chorlton.

For nearly 70 years the college at Didsbury has been turning out students.

I should know I was one of the class of ’72, newly graduated from Manchester Polytechnic and ready for a year’s teacher training.

The chapel in 1908

Now what I didn’t know at the time was that for a century before it had been a theological college, bought by the Methodists and only vacated by them in 1942.

Nor until recently did I make the connection with Chorlton, which is all the more surprising because there has been a Methodist presence here for a long time.

So the popular story goes Methodism came to Chorlton in 1770 when a soldier and a few companions arrived in the township and began preaching.  The message took hold and by 1800 a Methodist Society had been formed and Wesleyan ministers were visiting each Sunday.

At first they had worshipped on the green and in barns, and then in their chapel on what is now Beech Road.

This was rebuilt in 1826 and later still a new church built on Manchester Road which relegated the old chapel to occasional use.

Rev. James Butterworth

 “Then in 1918 a young student from Didsbury Ministerial Training College, just out of the army, happened to be cycling through Chorlton when he saw this dark and closed building next to a brightly lit and lively public house and thought to himself ‘this is wrong’, he saw in his mind’s eye, the Chapel as warm and inviting as the pub. 

So he went to his tutors and asked permission to start a boys club there, and he and some other students canvassed the roads in the immediate area and had a very good response.

Since then preaching re-commenced in 1921 and the boys’ and girls’ club provided a youthful choir. Fellowship classes were started, the women’s meeting had a membership of 50-60 and there were concerts every Saturday night.

The name of the young trainee minister was Rev. James Butterworth, and having cut his teeth here in Chorlton went on to found ‘Clubland’ in the East End of London, which did mighty work among the poor and dispossessed of that area.”*

Philip first told me the story a few years back and since then has kindly provided me with an extract from an article he wrote on the chapel on Beech Road.

*Philip E. Lloyd, January 2008

Pictures; Wesleyan Bazaar Souvenir Hand book, 1908, and Rev. James Butterworth, Walworth Methodist Church

See also James Butterwoth, Christian youth work work and Clubland, http://infed.org/mobi/james-butterworth-christian-youth-work-and-clubland/