Forest of Dean Bible Christian Circuit - (General)

by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Tuesday, October 16, 2007, 02:40 (6250 days ago) @ Dorothy

BIBLE CHRISTIANS AND UNITED METHODISTS.

The Bible Christian movement apparently reached the Forest at Drybrook from Monmouth in 1823 and was introduced to many communities by a mission established in 1826. The mission, conducted by two preachers holding open-air and cottage services, gained early converts in and around Drybrook and also spread beyond the Forest. Its first chapel within the Forest was Bethel, built at Drybrook in 1836 and opened in 1837. (fn. 74) Later that year Bible Christian societies at Drybrook, Edge Hills, Soudley, and High Beech had memberships of 17, 15, 6, and 3 respectively. The High Beech meeting lapsed soon afterwards but that at Soudley grew (fn. 75) and in 1846 it built a small chapel on Bradley hill near Upper Soudley. The chapel, a square stone building, was called Zion. (fn. 76) The Edge Hills society dwindled in the later 1840s and lapsed before 1856. (fn. 77) It was represented in 1851 by a congregation of c. 14 attending morning services on Quarry hill near Drybrook. (fn. 78) At that time Bethel had afternoon and evening congregations of up to c. 110 and Zion morning and evening congregations of c. 60 and their respective Sunday schools taught more than 50 and 30 children. (fn. 79)

By 1850 the mission had visited many places on the eastern and southern sides of the Forest and had established small societies at Bream, Lea Bailey, and Yorkley Slade. Services were held at Bream from 1841 (fn. 80) and the society, led by Henry Jones, built a chapel on the Parkend road at Bream's Eaves in 1851. (fn. 81) At Ruspidge, where the mission resumed its work in 1856, (fn. 82) a small chapel was built in 1857. (fn. 83) Such successes enabled the mission to become a separate circuit in 1858. (fn. 84) The following year the Bream's Eaves chapel was rebuilt to include a schoolroom, (fn. 85) the new building being retained as a schoolroom in 1906 when another chapel was built alongside it. (fn. 86) Also in 1859 the Drybrook society built a larger chapel on a site some way south-east of Bethel. Called Providence, it opened in 1860 (fn. 87) and housed a schoolroom on its lower floor. New schoolrooms were built next to it in 1899. (fn. 88) Bethel was converted as a house. (fn. 89)

In the later 19th century Bible Christians opened chapels in five more places within the Forest. At Yorkley Slade, where the cause was revived by Henry Jones in 1858, a chapel was built in 1862. (fn. 90) It became part of the Methodist Church in 1932 and a large schoolroom was added to it in 1955. (fn. 91) It closed in 1992. At Lea Bailey, which the mission reached in 1847, (fn. 92) open-air meetings were held at the Dancing green. Later, services at Red House, just within Weston under Penyard (Herefs.), drew a congregation from the north of the Forest and adjoining parts of Herefordshire and continued intermittently for some time after 1869, when a chapel called Bethel was built to the south-east at Bailey Lane End. (fn. 93) The chapel was rebuilt in 1930 (fn. 94) and became part of the Methodist Church in 1932. In 1869 also a small chapel was built on the south-western side of the Forest at Clements End, (fn. 95) where preaching had begun in 1856. (fn. 96) Apart from their chapels the Bible Christians had several preaching stations in the Forest in the 1860s but only one, at Ruardean Woodside, in 1875. In that year the total membership of their eight chapels, including one newly opened at Cinderford, was 166, with Drybrook (44) and Bream's Eaves (43) attracting the largest numbers. (fn. 97) The Cinderford chapel, at Flaxley Meend, (fn. 98) closed in 1879 but the society was revived in 1884. It held services and a Sunday school at Zion, the Wesleyan Methodists' chapel in lower High Street, which it purchased the following year. The Bible Christians had little success in Cinderford and in 1917 their successors, the United Methodists, sold Zion to the Y.M.C.A. (fn. 99) The Bible Christian cause at Ruardean Woodside was renewed several times before 1881, when a handful of people built a chapel at Knights Hill, to the west. The chapel, called Zion, became part of the Methodist Church in 1932 but closed in 1973 (fn. 1) and was a house in 1992.

From: 'Forest of Dean: Protestant nonconformity', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 396-404. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23273. Date accessed: Tuesday, October 16, 2007.