Pontefract, West Yorkshire

Pontefract is a market town in the historic West Riding of Yorkshire, now within the City of Bradford.

John Wesley passed through Pontefract on his way to Epworth on Tuesday 18 March 1746. There is no record of him preaching on this occasion. At his next visit on Wednesday 29 July 1772 at noon he opened the new preaching-house and preached to a “large and still congregation”. Wesley’s last visit was on Friday 23 April 1790 when he preached in the new chapel on Romans 3:23 before moving on to Wakefield.

Wesleyan Methodism: The Society was formed around 1765, or earlier, and was in the Leeds. It owed much to the encouragement of the Rev. Edward Buckley, Curate and in 1770 Vicar of St Mary’s, Kippax, and to the leadership of John Shephard of Peckfield, whose home contained the preaching-house opened by Wesley in 1772, A new chapel was opened on 4 April 1790 and another, in the Horsefair, seating 1000, on 13 January 1825. The development of the town led to the building of a school chapel in Newgate, opened on 19 October 1875.

Primitive Methodism: There was a Sunday school started around 1829. The first chapel was built in Booths just below the castle in 1834. This building was replaced by a 500-seat chapel, opened in Micklegate on 21 January 1872. In 1900 the Tanshelf Mission was opened.

The Wesleyan (Horsefair) and PM (Micklegate) Circuits united in the 1950s, forming the Pontefract Circuit and the Horsefair congregation moved to the Micklegate chapel. This building was destroyed by an arsonist in 1965 and replaced in 1969. Meanwhile, Central Methodist Church opened in 1962, designed by John Poulson, at that time a member in the circuit.

Sources
  • Sheffield Independent, 6 March 1824, page 2.
  • Primitive Methodism', Christian World, 16 February 1872, page 4.
  • 'Pontefract. New Wesleyan School Chapel', York Herald, 22 April 1875, page 6.
  • 'New Wesleyan School Chapel at Pontefract', Wakefield Free Press, 24 April 1875, page 8.
  • 'Pontefract: Opening of a New Wesleyan Chapel', Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 21 October 1875, page 7.
  • 'Pontefract Primitive Methodists', Leeds Times, 8 August 1840, page 8.
  • 'A Hundred Years of Methodism. Pontefract Circuit Looks Back', Yorkshire Evening Post, 26 May 1934, page 7.

Entry written by: DCD and DHR
Category: Place
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