Explore the latest news and find out what's on this month
Explore our learning offer for schools, families and community groups
Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
Want to discover more about your local area?
Molesey’s first Chapel
Museums celebrate anniversaries for many reasons. They’re an opportunity to put on a display that will showcase items in their collection that perhaps have not been seen by the public in a long time. For local museums, it is also the chance to revisit and re-tell some aspect of the story of the locality that hasn’t featured in a while. Significant anniversaries perform this task well. It is even more enjoyable for museum staff and volunteers when they can link the anniversary celebration to a personal interest.
In my role as an Elmbridge Museum volunteer, I have written blogs for our website before. When wondering what I could contribute next, I thought about the research I was doing for East Molesey Methodist Church as this year they are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the building of their first chapel in Manor Road.
Photograph of Avril Landsdell holding up a photo donated to the museum, 1978.
This led me to search the Museum’s collection for information about Methodism in Elmbridge.
To my surprise I found notes and photographs from a museum display mounted in 1988. Avril Lansdell was our Curator at the time and her husband, Howard, was a Methodist local preacher. Avril had written a monograph on the history of Methodism in Esher for the Esher District Local History Society. Together, they took all the photographs that featured in the exhibition.
What was the occasion? 1988 marked the 250th anniversary of the conversion of John Wesley and the beginnings of Methodism.
Molesey’s Methodist Church, 1988 (148.1988).
For those less familiar with the history of Methodism it is a Christian movement that began in 18th century England but is now found around the world. John Wesley, an Oxford don and Anglican priest, was its leading figure. He was no stranger to Surrey, visiting Cobham many times and preaching his last sermon at Leatherhead in 1791.
Methodism in Molesey dates from 1847 with the arrival of Mr Thomas Thomas, a baker from Culmstock in Devon. He started a school in Bridge Road and opened the classroom for religious services.
In 1867 the congregation were able to erect a small Sunday School room-cum-church in Manor Road. By 1876 they had raised funds to build the present much larger church in front of it. The 1867 building was replaced by a new Sunday School Hall in 1885. Further extensions have been added since in 1908, 1970 and 2002.
The images from 1988 are historically significant. One of Avril’s and Howard’s photographs, for example, is of the present day East Molesey Methodist Church building but shows the entrance to the church before the remodelling in 2002.
The other photographs captured the Elmbridge Methodist churches at a moment in time. Cobham’s first Methodist chapel in Cedar Road opened in 1862. When it was demolished in 1966, the former Sunday School building, also in Cedar Road, was converted into a new church. In 2017, the Methodist Church and the United Reform Church joined together to become Cobham United Church. The building is now a nursery school.
The present Methodist Church on Terrance Road, Walton-on-Thames, was designed by Herbert Isitt and opened in 1887. Designed in Gothic style, it remains a striking building with its 100-foot red brick spire. One of the main donors who helped finance the new church was T.W. Pocock of Virginia Water. They also helped to fund the church in East Molesey.
Esher Methodist Church opened in Wolsey Road in 1889. The architect was Charles Bell who had designed the Sunday School Hall at East Molesey Methodist Church four years earlier. The Esher Church closed in 1993 and is now a day nursery.
Weybridge Methodist Church, Heath Road, 1988 (128.1988/1).
Methodist churches are organised into small groups called circuits. However, each of the Methodist churches in Elmbridge have never been grouped together for administrative purposes. Molesey is part of the Teddington Circuit and Cobham is in Dorking and Horsham. Esher Methodist Church (1889-1993) was in the Kingston Circuit while Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge are now in the Wey Valley Circuit.
The efforts to establish Methodist churches in other parts of Elmbridge experienced mixed success. In Hersham Methodism gained some adherents but it was Congregationalists who succeeded in building their own chapel there in 1844.
The Primitive Methodist wing of the Methodist Church built a chapel in Winters Road, Long Ditton, around 1879. However, the building subsequently passed out of Methodist use and, since 2008, has been owned by the New Apostolic Church.
The attempts of Surbiton Methodist Church to find its sites in Claygate and Hinchley Wood in the interwar years did not result in the building of a church. However, a site was finally purchased at Chessington in 1949.
To mark the 150th anniversary of the building of their first chapel in Manor Road, East Molesey Methodist Church are displaying a free exhibition at the church. The exhibition will tell the story of how Wesleyan Methodism developed in Molesey. It will also focus on the contribution of East Molesey Methodist church to local community life.
For more information, please see their website: https://emmc.org.uk/EMMCEventsmenu8.htm
Anthony Barnes, Museum Volunteer
