Leicester Chronicler -John Wesley

John Wesley and two of his brothers, Charles and Samuel, were educated at Oxford and were ordained in the Church of England. In his early thirties, John, with Charles, sailed to the American colony of Georgia. Their stay was disastrous, and John returned, an angry and disillusioned man.

On his return journey he had been deeply impressed by the teachings of the Moravians, some of whom were his fellow travellers and was strongly influenced by the Dutch merchant Peter Bohler.

Charles Wesley experienced a form of `conversion' in May 1738 whilst recovering from an illness. John underwent his own conversion several days later after attending a service in which he heard a reading of Martin Luther's introduction to the Epistle to the Romans. The Methodist Church records this moment as being its birth.

Wesley's base in London was a Society of Methodists at Fetter Lane. A member of this group was the forthright and energetic Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, whose principal residence was Donington Park near Castle Donington in Leicestershire.

She appointed a number of her own Methodist preachers to travel through her large estates to set up Methodist societies. One of these men was David Taylor who in 1741 visited Glenfield and was heard by a young Samuel Deacon. Deacon later became a Methodist preacher himself. Their village of Barton-in-the Beans became a Methodist stronghold as well as the location of Deacon's famous clock-making business established by Samuel's son. Their workshop is now part of the Newarke Houses Museum in Leicester which has several long case clocks constructed by the family. The various offshoots of the chapel at Barton later joined together to form the New Connexion of the General Baptists under the leadership of Dan Taylor, a former stone mason who had been converted by Wesley.

Wesley's own theology gradually moved away from the Moravian tradition whose own beliefs had begun to change. Fearful of the growing Moravian influence in the area, Lady Huntingdon asked Wesley to visit Leicestershire and so the stage was set for his first preaching tour of this area in 1741, during which he visited Markfield, Market Harborough, Hinckley and Donington.

In 1753 he preached to a `serious and attentive audience' in Butt Close near St Margaret's Church, and by the time he returned in 1757, the Methodist Chapel at Millstone Lane had been established and was prospering under the leadership of John Brandon and the protection of a Presbyterian hosier, William Lewis, who owned the barn in Millstone Lane first used as meeting place.

Wesley returned on several further occasions prior to the formation of the Leicester Circuit of the Methodists in 1776. His last visit took place in 1790. He died in London on 2 March 1791.

It is said that on one of his journeys to Leicester, Wesley's coach was repaired at a wheelwright in Kibworth Harcourt. This village was later the location for Thomas Cook's vision of working class temperate excursions. These two men would have found much in common.

Methodism in Leicester

Leicester's first Methodist church was in Millstone Lane and was founded in 1753. It was replaced by a larger church in Bishop Street next to Town Hall Square, which is still flourishing. A house was acquired in Southgate Street in 1793 for the use of Methodist ministers.

In the next century, many Methodist churches were built in the Leicester area including those in King Richard's Road, Aylestone Road, Northgate Street, Humberstone Road, Saxby Street, Wesley Hall in Mere Road, Newarke Street, Metcalfe Street and Alexander Street. Some were relatively short lived, their buildings either later demolished or converted to other uses. Others have remained as places of worship to the present day. In Leicestershire as a whole, the number of Methodist places of worship increased six-fold between 1800 and 1850, especially in agricultural villages. The established church experienced a parallel decline in attendance.

Other branches of Methodism also became established in Leicester. The first Primitive Methodist sermon in the area was preached by John Benton in 1818, the same year in which their chapel in York Street was built. The Methodists of the New Connexion had a chapel near the London Road railway station which was built in 1861. In 1890 this was taken down and rebuilt for other purposes in Rolleston Street where it became part of a thread mill complex. The New Connexion also had chapels in Belgrave gate and Granby Street, both long since demolished. The Methodists of the Wesley Association also held a chapel in the area, in Lower Hill Street, which was demolished in 1933.

After 1907, the New Connexion and Association Methodists joined together to become part of the United Baptist Church, and worshiped at the Melbourne Road Chapel, now an independent evangelical church.

In terms of social history, the rise of Methodism took place at the same time as a decline in the paternalism of the established church in the countryside. Non-conformist preaching also addressed many of the social problems of the working classes that the Church of England was unable to deal with. Travelling Methodist preachers were the `shock troops of the evangelical revival' and their message found a particular resonance amongst both the farm and the factory workers. It was seen that the teaching of the itinerant ministers led to a clear improvement in the behaviour of labourers. In coalmining areas, men who were to become union leaders, learned how to speak to their fellowmen by preaching from Methodist pulpits, and were often able to provide a moderating influence to counteract rising militancy. Sociologists also associate the concept of the `respectability' of the working class ethic as having been fostered by Methodism.

Methodism, although now serving a declining membership, has a powerful and confident voice. Its long association with Leicestershire continues in that the Annual Methodist Conference was held in Loughborough in 2004. Locally, the spirit, purpose and theology of John Wesley continues in the work of the congregation at Methodist churches throughout the area, none more resolutely than at Bishop Street Methodist Church in the heart of the city, adjacent to Town Hall Square.