To contact us:

Sedbergh Methodist Church

New Street

Sedbergh

LA10 5AF

E-mail: Office@sedberghmethodistchurch.org

HISTORY

 

Cautley Chapel

Built in 1845, and celebrating its 150th anniversary in 1995, Cautley Wesleyan Chapel was opened just 2 years before St Mark’s the Anglican Church in Cautley. The roadside site, which cost £10 6s 8d, lies opposite to the former School House, now the chapel car park, on the corner of Marsh Lane. The graveyard has been extended on at least 3 occasions since.

For some 20 years the Methodist Preachers had been active in this part of the dales, and Roger Moister, later to become ‘the Patriarch of Wyoming’, reported that on 28 May 1820 he ‘preached at 3 places, and walked 21 miles’ to accomplish this. At the same time Meetings had been held in houses in Hallbank, Dovecote in Dowbiggin and Holme in Middleton, and as this work progressed and Membership increased, it became necessary to build a chapel capable of accommodating some 60 or so worshippers, and to hold regular services.

Richard Martin, born into a Congregational family at Broad Yeat in Dowbiggin in 1823, came under this influence, and in 1845, the year this chapel was built, he was accepted for the Wesleyan Methodist ministry. He attended the opening services and wrote that ‘Squire Booth led the proceedings . . . which turned into a prayer meeting, and some 7 or 8 conversions took place’.

The interior of the building gives the pleasing impression of a small yet spacious chapel, with brightly painted tiered seats, walls hung with expression work, and modern lighting and heating.

 

Fell End Chapel

Originally called Ravenstonedale, this chapel stands in a prominent position on the A683 in the more hilly countryside beyond Rawthey Bridge. Built as an act of faith by the Hawes and Sedbergh Circuit and opened on 27 October 1861, to accommodate worshippers ‘conveniently near their dwellings’ instead of their travelling to the town (of Ravenstonedale), it has always been a part of the Sedbergh section of the Circuit. Renamed Fell End in 1870, it is supported by a local farming congregation attending by motor transport.

The building is distinctive by its external painted stonework and the wood-lined interior, to keep out the draughts. Although earlier preaching plans of 1853-54 show 3 farms as having Sunday afternoon services, alternating between Murthwaite, Ellerhill and Sandbed, it was near the latter that the chapel was built. The original cost of the land, purchased from the owner of the farm next door, Low Sprint Gill, was £1 9s 9½d. The number of Members in 1859 was 51, but this had fallen to 26 by 1862.

Fresh inflows of new converts brought increased Membership, due to evangelistic missions led by Mrs Woodward in 1911, and by Mr J. W. Dargue, a local farmer, in 1925. Today’s Membership is small, but enthusiastic.

 

Frostrow Chapel

From the early years of the 19th century Wesleyan Methodist Preachers had been active in the area of Hallbank, Frostrow and Farfield, and converts opened their homes for worship and Class Meetings. A building in the region of Sunnyside may have been used in the early days, but in 1886 the chapel was built and opened free of debt at a cost of £570. Sacrificial giving had made this possible.

It is one of very few Methodist chapels to have both a bell and a graveyard, and as early as 1886 the first burial took place, of a child only 13 weeks old. The bell was donated by the Hewetsons of Ravenstonedale when the chapel was built, and still today it proclaims the presence of a worshipping community.

Completely refurbished in recent times, with new lighting and heating, and with adjacent school premises and car park, the chapel was filled to capacity in 1986 when the centenary was celebrated. A small but loyal group of worshippers meet each Sunday at 2pm.  All who stop here to join in worship are still offered fellowship and friendship, and a lively presentation of the Word of God to a needy world.

 

Garsdale Low Smithy Chapel

Usually referred to as ‘Low Smithy’, this chapel was founded by the ‘Apostle of the Dales’, Jonathan Kershaw, the itinerant tea-seller, and his wife Mary. He sold tea by day and preached at night. Both husband and wife are commemorated on a plaque inside the building, entrance to which is gained through the small cottage where they lived and died. They are buried on the north side of the chapel, within a few feet of the pulpit where he so often preached.

The chapel is ‘a perfectly preserved example of an early Wesleyan place of worship’, spacious and well proportioned, with simple painted wooden benches facing a central pulpit, raised slightly above the communion rail and flanked on both sides by choir seats. Sadly these are now filled only at ‘Specials’, or at funerals.

The original chapel site measured only 130 sq. yds and cost the Rev. Kershaw £5. Four months later he sold it to the Trustees for 5 shillings, a chapel having been built on it by voluntary contributions. In subsequent years the graveyard was extended. Near the entrance is a memorial to Richard Atkinson, a Christian gamekeeper who lived at Grouse Hall, Garsdale. An active preacher in the dales, he died in 1884 at the early age of 40. In 1888 a Wesleyan chapel was built in Grisedale and named the Richard Atkinson Memorial Chapel, and before the chapel was sold in 1972, the plaque was moved to Low Smithy graveyard for preservation.