Mount Pleasant Wesleyan Methodist Church and Pitt Street Wesleyan Methodist Church;...

Mount Pleasant. The second Wesleyan chapel to be opened in Liverpool was Mount Pleasant, erected in 1790 to serve a new, expanding district of the town, for those families who found Pitt Street remote and distasteful. Even so, when in 1825 it became a member church of the South Circuit its membership (590) was only two thirds that of Pitt Street. The character of the neighbourhood changed rapidly and the services became more spontaneous and evangelistic. The remaining influential families left with the opening of Grove Street in 1859, when it was proposed to close Mount Pleasant. The Chapel was however retained as a mission. In 1884 it was transferred to the new Mission Circuit and was reconstructed in that year at a cost of £2,682. Its central position by this time led to its being renamed Central Hall with a lay missioner in charge of the work. Mount Pleasant was closed in 1905 with the building of the new Central Hall a few yards away. The building was turned into a billiards hall and still stands.

Pitt Street was the oldest Wesleyan chapel in Liverpool, erected in 1750 and registered in 1754 and replacing a room in Cable Street which had served the Methodist society since the mid-1740s. Wesley and Adam Clarke both preached in this building, situated as it was in a wild, waterlogged and unpleasant area of the town. The church was enlarged in 1765 and had a Sunday School attached from 1785. A complete rebuilding took place in 1803. From the turn of the century Pitt Street was completely overshadowed by the more aristocratic Mount Pleasant and from 1863 when it was detached from the South Circuit and given a separate status was run as a Home Mission. The neighbourhood deteriorated rapidly and by 1875 the chapel despite the sentiment attaching to it was grievously in debt and nearly extinct. The Revd. Charles Garrett was then allowed to commence his Riverside Mission with Pitt Street as its centre, concentrating particularly on work among sailors and down-and-outs. The whole building was reconstructed the same year at a cost of £2,155 and soon became a focus of powerful revivalism. Gradually other mission stations took the evangelistic edge from this ancient sanctuary and it was finally closed and pulled down in 1905. Tenements were built on the site.