Methodism on the Bucks/Herts Border
Rick Ball is researching his Ball ancestors who came from the Aston Clinton and Buckland area of Buckinghamshire, immediately adjacent to the rural part of Tring. In mid-October, he posted a request on BUCKS-L@rootsweb.com asking where Methodists living in Buckland would have worshiped. This led to an extensive correspondence on non-conformity but also to the following replies, which I am reproducing here (with minor editorial changes, improved formatting and a couple of corrections). The important thing to realise is that non-conformists didn't consider county boundaries when they decided where to worship.
On 19th October Matt Tompkins clarified the question saying: Rick is not asking about a period when Methodism did not exist, so we can take it that the period in question was the second half of the 18th century, and that what was being asked was (i) which Circuit covered Buckland and (ii) was a Wesleyan chapel built in or near Buckland before 1800 (perhaps in Tring or Berkhamstead, or in Wendover or Chesham?).
On 20th October I responded with information on the Hertfordshire side of the border: According to the 1851 Ecclesiastical Survey (see Religion in Hertfordshire 1847-1851, by Judith Burg, Hertfordshire Records Society, 1995 there would have been no nearby Methodist Chapel in Hertfordshire in the late 18th century.
In fact, the area was a Baptist stronghold and around Tring there were many more Baptists than members of the Church of England if the attendance figures are to be believed.
A quick glance over West Hertfordshire suggests that the nearest Wesleyan Chapels in Hertfordshire in existence before 1800 were in St Albans and Harpenden.
On 21st October Matt Tompkins reported: I was in the library yesterday so I had a look in the Victoria County History for Bucks. In the section on Ecclesiastical History it had this to say (vol I, p 341):
"The Methodists secured several centres of influence in this county towards the end of the [18th] century. Wesley himself made a preaching excursion to Beaconsfield and High Wycombe in 1757, and the latter became the chief scene of his labours and those of his followers from that time forward. The county of Buckingham was soon made part of a 'circuit' embracing also Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. It was under the influence of Wesley that Hannah Ball began her Sunday School at High Wycombe in 1769 ...; it was in connection with the parish church, and she was careful to take the children there after their lessons. In 1777 a Methodist Chapel was first built at High Wycombe, and Wesley came to preach there; it was on this occasion that he was unable to proceed with his sermon because a drummer had been hired to play just outside the window. At Aylesbury there were Methodists also, though for some time they preached in the Baptists' meeting house." It goes on to mention that in 1768 a Methodist congregation was founded at Wooburn, which later built a chapel at Core's End."
I also glanced in the chapters on individual parishes around Buckland to find out if they had Wesleyan chapels and when they were built. Unfortunately the VCH for Bucks, while excellent on manorial and parochial church history, ignores the history of nonconformity almost completely. However it seems the picture was something like this.
No Methodist chapel was built in the immediate vicinity of Buckland in the 18th century - the first Wesleyan Methodist chapel in the area seems to have been the one in Stoke Mandeville, built in 1818. Chris Reynolds tells us that the chapel at Long Marston in Herts was built in 1829. Buckland's own chapel was built in 1831 (a second one was built at Buckland Common in 1860), and that of Aylesbury in 1837. Ivinghoe had three by 1851 (in Horton, Aston and Ivinghoe itself), so although I do not know their dates it seems likely that one of them was also quite early. Berkhamsted's chapel was built in 1844 (per Chris Reynolds). Bierton acquired its chapel in 1877. Cheddington also had one which, judging by its appearance, was middle-to-late 19C.
So it looks as though in the late 18C the nearest Wesleyan Methodist chapels to Buckland were those at High Wycombe and Harpenden (as Chris Reynolds said, this was a strongly Baptist area, and most of the Dissenting places of worship before 1800 would have been their meeting houses).
However I think it likely that until they built their own chapel the Buckland Methodists would have worshipped right there in Buckland. The Methodist Circuits were unions of individual congregations called 'societies' - groups of people living near each other and sharing an interest in the Methodist approach to worship. At first they met wherever they could, in some private house or barn (often before or after attending an Anglican service, since they tended to come from Anglican rather than Old Dissenting backgrounds), but they usually eventually built themselves a chapel. Thus the existence of a chapel suggests the much earlier presence of a society. The fact that in the 19C Wesleyanism in Buckland was strong enough to have built two chapels suggests that the parish had a long tradition of Methodism, and I suspect that it may have had one of the first societies in the area (Ivinghoe may have been another).
On 24th October Eve McLaughlin <eve@varneys.demon.co.uk> wrote: The purose built chapel in Buckland was erected by the Methodist in 1860, replacing a converted cottage or hut used in the 1830s; but it is quite possible that the powerful Methodist circuit based on Eaton Bray (Beds) sent preachers round to Buckland (as to other Bucks villages) much earlier. The Durley family of several generations travelled fairly widely preaching in barns and cottages, for instance.
There were also major built chapels in Aylesbury and Wilstone within easy reach in summer at least. The major causes in the Buckland district were, however, either Baptist or Independent, so the membership of any Wesleyan cause based in the village would be likely to be very small. There are no surviving early records of such a cause (but see Eaton Bray above) All registers pre 1837 SHOULD have been handed over to the Registrar General in 1837; basic indexing of them is on the IGI, but where originals exist, actually checking them is vital. All registers and other Nonconformist records remaining in Bucks and deposited in the Bucks County Archives are listed in Tracing Your Ancestors in Bucks.
For some Bedfordshire links see Rev Nathan ANDERSON, Methodist Minister, 1770s
If you can add to the information given above tell me.