Methodist Church Records

Records of the Stratford-upon-Avon Primitive and Wesleyan Methodist Churches.

DR147/1/1-54: Records of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, and its chapels at Claverdon, Henley-in-Arden, Snitterfiled and Wellesbourne, 1833-1958

DR147/21/1-36: Records of the Primitive Methodist Church at Stratford-upon-Avon (united with the Wesleyans in 1932) and its chapels at Clifford Chambers, Newbold-on-Stour, Stretton-on-Fosse and Wellesbourne, 1852-1958

<p>Other collections of Methodist papers are at DR 396, DR 703, DR 784, DR 841, DR 844 and DR 893</p>

• <corpname>Wesleyan Methodist Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire</corpname>
• <corpname>Primitive Methodist Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire</corpname>

The written consent of the Superintendent Minister is required for access to records less than sixty years old

The first Wesleyan meetings were held in 1819 in a private house in Wood Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, and from 1821 the meetings were held in Meer Street, until a chapel was built in the Birmingham Road in 1835.

The earliest surviving records of the meetings of the Primitive Methodists in Stratford-upon-Avon date from 1852. A chapel was erected in Great William Street in 1866 and a circuit developed in the surrounding villages.

In 1932 the Primitive Methodist churches were officially joined to the Wesleyan Methodists, but in Stratford the two churches continued to operate separately until Easter 1939, when the two congregations were united and the Primitive Methodist Chapel sold.