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Wesley Chapel  -  1862-1962

 
 
Cover  -  Ministers  -  Chapter 1  - Chapter 2  -  Chapter 3  -  Chapter 4 
 
Chapter 5   -   Chapter 6   -   Chapter 7   -   Pictures   -   Opening Service, 1862
 

THE OPENING DAY

"THE PUBLIC ARE RESPECTFULLY INFORMED THAT IT IS INTENDED TO CELEBRATE THE OPENING OF THIS EDIFICE IN THE FOLLOWING MANNER. A SERMON WILL BE PREACHED BY THE REV CHARLES PREST, PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE"

So read the announcement of the opening of the new Harrogate Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Allotment Field. Besides the President there were other important people there on the morning of Friday, October 3rd, 1862. The Secretary of Conference, Rev John Farrar, the Rev. W. Lord of Woodhouse Grove, and the Rev Charles Churchill of "Eastern British America," with other notable gentlemen, all formed part of what the Harrogate Advertiser pleasantly described as "a large and highly respectable congregation."

But the day really belonged to the 234 members of the Church who, by the morning of Friday, had already cleared £3,197 of their current liabilities of £4,000. The final account, which would include the outside stone flagging, the iron palisades, and a host of small items, was to close on March 14th, 1865, at a total of £4,821, but for the moment the Treasurer, that redoubtable gentleman, Mr. Pickersgill Palliser, could rejoice that four-fifths of the debt was behind him.

The President preached from the 6th verse of the 2nd chapter of 1st Corinthians, "How be it we speak wisdom among them that are perfect; yet not the wisdom of this world." A public dinner was to follow the service but since it was not due to start until two o'clock, the President had, no doubt, ample time to develop his theme. He pointed out to his people that the integrity of the Word was their protection against false prophets, and their consciences their guide against false interpreters — a timely word to a Church already perhaps feeling troubled by the problems raised by Darwin's "Origin of Species" published only three years previously, and still selling in Mr Thomas Hollins' bookshop in Park Parade, where Messrs W D Dobson still carry on the business.

Forty-five guests walked along to the Brunswick Hotel (later the Prince of Wales), probably stopping to comment with interest on the new independent. Church at the corner of Victoria Avenue and West Park, opened only two months previously. They would walk along the edge of a Stray which would have looked sadly ill-cared for to our eyes, seeing, perhaps, ahead of them the old Brunswick Station situated on what is now that portion of the Stray in front of Trinity Church. Beyond the station they would still see the exit of the tunnel which, having run under the present Langcliffe Avenue, emerged at Royal Crescent, carrying the old Church Fenton line into Harrogate. The present station had been opened on August 1st, linking the line from the South to that from the North and thus making Harrogate more accessible to the visitors who still play an important part in the life of all the central town churches.

No doubt the diners at the Brunswick Hotel would dine rather more substantially than we should today foe the half crown which they paid for their lunch, and, when the table was cleared, they settled down to the serious business of the afternoon.

Mr W Holdsworth proposed the health of the President and, when the President had replied, six more speakers took up the tale. It is interesting to note that three of the eight speakers at this lunch were from Leeds — interesting because it reminds us that the friends from Leeds had contributed most generously to the cost of building both the old Chapel in 1824 and this present Chapel. Indeed the posters advertising the opening contained the following announcement, "A Special Train will leave Wellington Station. Leeds, on the day of opening, at 9-45 am, and will return from the Harrogate Station at 9-30 pm" If this return train seemed to he timed, to our modern way of thinking, a little late for an evening meeting due to start at 6 pm, we must remember that Addresses were to be given by no fewer than Seven Ministers and Two Local Preachers. We can but hope that if the good friends from Leeds had to run for their train, they did not disturb the meeting.

Let us leave these folk listening contentedly to their nine speakers and pause to consider why they had built this Church. The story related in the 50th Anniversary Booklet of 1912, tells that the Rev Henry Pollinger, who came to the Church in September, 1860, called his Church Officers together one evening, only a few months after his arrival, and told them bluntly that unless they built a larger Church he would leave them. Henry Pollinger's ultimatum was probably not the only reason for the building of he present "Wesley" for, at the Stonelaying Ceremony in October, 1861, the then President,the Rev J Rattenbury, said that to his knowledge this project had been talked of for twenty-five years.

The Chapel to which Mr. Pollinger had come in 1860 was situated at the corner of Beulah Street and Oxford Street. It had been built in 1824 to hold 550, and though the membership had doubled since that day it was still only 190. That old Chapel might well have been sufficient for the needs of the membership for most of the hundred years since it was sold, but it would not have been adequate for a Circuit Chapel. The courage with which they looked to the future in building a Circuit Chapel capable of holding nearly one thousand people may he judged from the fact that, on that day in 1860 when they decided to build, Beulah Chapel was not only the head of the Circuit, it actually was the Circuit. There were preaching places at Starbeck and at Bilton, each with ten members, but the membership of the Circuit amounted to the 190 mentioned previously. Starbeck built a Chapel in 1861 and Bar was built in 1865, and for another fourteen years these three Chapels formed the Circuit.

The ground on which the Chapel stood had been bought from the Victoria Park Estate, and a skeleton map prepared in 1864 by this Company, which owned large parts of the town centre, shows how nobly the new Chapel stood. Facing South as it does, it could look out over a Cambridge Road with open land on either side, and be seen from far across the West Park Stray. Oxford Street was built up on the South side, but except for Craven Lodge, a large house on the North side of Oxford Street, immediately across the road, there appears to have been only open fields across to the present Bower Road, so that it must have dominated the view from the East. From the North, too, since Cheltenham Mount was as yet unbuilt, it would stand out from Jinny Plain on the top of Ripon Road.

The exterior of the Chapel is described as "of plain character, with the exception of the front, which is of the Italian Style. Three columns of the Corinthian order are at the side of the entrances." Inside, the general colour scheme appears to have been one of dark brown paint on the woodwork relieved by the crimson cloth of the pulpit and pew seats. The pulpit itself was circular in shape but small in diameter and standing much higher than the. present rostrum, being reached by steps which wound halfway round the pulpit. The organ was the one brought from the old Chapel. It was much smaller in size than the present organ and must have stood rather insignificantly, for the Ladies of the Sewing Meeting did not delay long before purchasing a curtain to hide it. Downstairs were the classrooms and, at the front end, was the Chapel Keeper's accommodation. On his "front door" the letter box can still be seen. The Chapel Keeper, John Benson was, incidentally, a man of note and a power in the Church. A member of the Beulah Chapel when it was built in 1824, he became the Chapel Keeper there in 1826. He could neither read nor write, yet possessed an extraordinary knowledge of the Bible and of Wesley's hymns. He was the Leader of two classes (one of which seems to have been consistently the largest of the Society Classes) and remained the Chapel Keeper of the new Chapel until he was given a pension in May 1874, dying in the following year.

There were other men of note, too, in the congregation that night, but of the nine people who were speaking on this night, only one was a member of that congregation. There would have been no question as to who that one should be, for William Greensmith, with seventy years of Methodist life and Methodist family tradition behind him, was their acknowledged leader. His family had carried on the manufacture of hosiery in Nottinghamshire for over two hundred years and. his father had been one of the first men of substance to open his house to itinerant Methodist Preachers. William Greensmith as a boy was losing his eyesight at the age of nine when there came to the house a travelling Preacher, a Mr Bramwell. Just before leaving to continue his journey, Bramwell laid his hands on the boy's head and prayed that his eyesight might be restored. It was restored - immediately - and it never failed again. He had walked "in newness of life" since the age of 22 and throughout his long life he never failed to put his resources, spiritual and financial, at the disposal of the church, however often they were called for. He came to Harrogate in 1832, either to start or to take over a retail hosiery business in Regent Parade, and immediately attached himself to the Methodist cause in Chapel Street.

From 1855 to 1857 three men led the church in the effort to gain for themselves a Minister of their own, a struggle which resulted not only in their receiving a Minister hut also in being constituted a Circuit.

If William Greensmith was the leader, he must often have had cause to be grateful for the shrewdness and the seemingly boundless energy of the Chapel Treasurer, Pickersgill Palliser, whose name is almost legendary in the history of early Victorian Harrogate. He appears in the list of Pew Sittings as early as 1825. He published a "Weekly List of Visitors" in 1835, and in 1837 he adopted for this Weekly List the title of "The Harrogate Advertiser." In an article published in the "Advertiser" of April 29th, 1861. Mr W Haythornthwaite tells us that in addition to publishing a newspaper he was also an Insurance Agent; he took in visitors and let out on hire "Piano Fortes" he became a Postmaster and acted, also, as Secretary of the Baths Hospital. But if William Greensmith and Leonard Hobkinson ever exchanged a quizzical glance as they contemplated the multifarious activities of Palliser, they also knew that they could rely entirely and without question on his loyalty to his church. He became Treasurer in 1861 and continued in that office until 1881.

Leonard Hobkinson was the third of that trio. A deeply spiritual man, he was greatly loved by the people of his day, and we, a hundred years later, have good cause to be grateful to him for he was the only one of the three to leave behind him a line of descendants with an unbroken record of service to Wesley.

And of course there were the others, the men and women whose efforts had built the church in which they sang so proudly that night. The Preface to the Methodist Hymn Book begins with the words "Methodism was born in song." But if it was born in song, the church which bears the name of Methodist has lived only because its people learned to give, and give again, and keep on giving. These people had learned that lesson. Whether they were a hardier race than we are today may he a difficult question to answer, though the fact that they were sitting there listening quite contentedly to nine speakers may, at least, give us a clue. They were a "peculiar people," a people set apart; and the knowledge of this imposed a certain discipline on their lives and on their beliefs. They remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and the holiness of the day was rigidly observed; they had their prayer meetings and their class meetings, and the Preaching Plan showed a Quarterly Fast Day. They knew, too, what they believed, for they believed the Bible. They did not interpret it nor explain it away; they just believed it. We may look askance at the rigid discipline with which their homes were ruled, but it is as well to remember that most of them applied this same discipline to their own lives. We may not accept their uncompromising beliefs and standards, but we do accept, with gratitude to God, the church which they built and left to us.

 

 

 
 
 

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