Oldham is a large town and Metropolitan Borough in Greater Manchester and in the historic county of Lancashire. It is on the foothills of the Pennines with the rivers Irk and Medlock flowing through the town. In the mid-18th century Oldham became a centre for hat making and evolved into a major centre of textile manufacture.

John Wesley visited Oldham five times between 1770 and 1790.

Wesleyans

The Wesleyan Methodist Society started in the mid-18th century. John Murlin (1722-1799), who was arrested for street preaching, described Oldham as a place of daring and desperate wickedness. The Wesleyans opened a chapel in Bent Brow in 1775; this housed a Sunday School when the Society moved its worship to Domingo Street. The Sunday School met at 9 am then at the end of the session the children and adults walked to St Peter’s Anglican chapel to attend the service led by Rev. Hugh Grimshaw (1743-1793) who occasionally raised money for the Wesleyan Sunday school. In 1789 foundation stones were laid in Manchester Street for a chapel opened on Good Friday 1790. Mount Pleasant chapel was built in 1832 and in 1858 the Society moved to a new chapel in Greenacres Road.

A Methodist New Connexion chapel was built in Manchester Street in 1805 and was sold to the Baptists in 1816, when the MNC Ebenezer chapel opened in Union Street.

Primitive Methodists: Oldham was missioned by Manchester preachers in 1820. The Society opened two classes in the homes of members. Some 14,000 people attended the Oldham Bardsley Camp Meeting held on 19 May 1822, and in the same year Oldham became a Circuit. The first place of worship was at Ashworth’s stable in Duke Street. They then moved to a former machine shop in Grosvenor Street. In 1826 they built a chapel in the same street and used the machine shop as a Sunday school. In 1836 the Society built a more commodious chapel in Boardman Street which Hugh Bourne opened. In 1850 the Lees Road chapel was built, followed by a chapel in Henshaw Street in 1871. Primitive Methodism developed so well in Oldham that the denomination had four Circuits in the town.

A United Methodist Free Church' chapel was built in 1834 in King Street.

Independent Methodists: Oldham was an important centre for the Independent Methodists. Around 1806 a group of worshippers in St Peter’s parish church formed a group who met weekly under the leadership of Joseph Matley. At one of their meeting John Neild took a scripture text and began to expound it. This let to split in the group. The friends of John Neild left the group and began to meet in an old disused mill in Whitehead Square. The incumbent of the parish church asked them stop holding their meetings. They refused and called themselves Independent Methodists: they were the first group to use the name Independent Methodists. The denomination did not adopt the name until 1898. In 1816 George Street chapel was the first purpose built Independent Methodist chapel in England. In the same year they started the first of seven Sunday schools in the town and neighbouring area.

Entry written by: DHR
Category: Place
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