Primitive Methodists (General)

by peteressex , Sunday, January 22, 2012, 06:51 (4693 days ago) @ mrsbruso

Growing up as a Methodist in London, and born 11 years after the branches of Methodism were reunited, I didn't realise what splits there had been until I spent school holidays with my grandparents at Lydney in the 1950s. They were stalwarts of the Methodist Church in Springfield Road (once "Ebenezer Chapel" as you can still see in the stonework) which until 1933 had been the "Prim", and they let you know it, comparing it with the other Methodist Church in Hill Street, which they told you was occupied by "them Wesserleyans." As far as I remember, the congregations did not mix.

To be fair to my grandparents, they didn't embark on the subject until I had been marched to a circuit choir rendering of Stainer's "Crucifixion" at Pillowell Methodist Church, which had (and maybe still has) the words "Primitive Methodist" in its stonework, and I had queried the word "Primitive." Apparently all such manifestations of faction were supposed to have been eradicated, but it didn't always happen.

My sister has a bible presented to my grandmother's sister (Miss F M Sterrey) when she moved away from Lydney in 1912. It is inscribed by my grandfather as Sunday School Secretary, and the inscription studiously refers to the church as "Primitive."

The Hill Street church is long closed, but I visited Springfield in September 2011 to see the pulpit King James bible presented in my grandfather's memory in 1962. Numbers there may not be huge, but it is a modernised and well-kept chapel that I wish well.

Given such circumstances and a reasonable fist at archiving, there may well be stored magazines of "Prim" chapels in the Forest which would throw light on the Primitive Methodist emphases and maybe the differences from "them Wesserleyans," as well as the material giving rise to this thread.