The story of how Methodism came to Chorlton is an intriguing one and involved a visit from a soldier and his friends to the township in the 18th century.
Having walked in from Manchester they began preaching and drew an small group of people. Within a few decades, there were a number of Wesleyan families who worshiped in each other's homes, or in barns in the winter and in the open air in the summer. They built their first chapel on Beech Road in the 1820s, and were an important part of the community.
So this episode of In Our Time is one I shall listen to with great intrest.
"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire. As a student, he was mocked for approaching religion too methodically and this jibe gave a name to the movement: Methodism.
Wesley took his ideas out across Britain wherever there was an appetite for Christian revival, preaching in the open, especially the new industrial areas. Others spread Methodism too, such as George Whitefield, and the sheer energy of the movement led to splits within it, but it soon became a major force.
With, Stephen Plant, Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge, Eryn White, Reader in Early Modern History at Aberystwyth University, and William Gibson, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History.
Producer: Simon Tillotson"
Picture; Wesleyan Chapel, Beech Road, 1908, Wesleyan Bazaar Souvenir Hand book, 1908
*John Wesley and Methodism, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3m2
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