Methodist Churches, Stratford-upon-Avon Circuit

Records of the Stratford-upon-Avon Wesleyan Methodist Church, Stratford-upon-Avon Circuit (after 1939 combined with the Primitive Methodists)

DR703/1 - 68: Circuit records, 1960 - 1971

DR703/69 - 99: records of the individual Methodist Chapels at, Henley-in-Arden, Wellesbourne (Wesleyan and Primitive), Snitterfield, Claverdon, Moreton Morrell, Bearley, Stretton-on-Fosse and Luddington, with some miscellanea, 1877- 1988

<p>Other collections of Methodist records are at DR147, DR396, DR703, DR784, DR841, DR844 and DR893</p>

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

Deposited by the Reverend W.F. Seymour, Evesham, Worcs., 3 September 1990.

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 Wesleyan Methodist churches were officially joined to the Prmitive 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.