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Central Methodist graveyard, Morley
Morley is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and developed as a small market town: there will have been a place of worship from the earliest times.
St Mary’s-in-the-Wood is on the original Christian site, and the ancient, small, single-story building was replaced by a high-walled structure and steeple late in the Nineteenth Century. The congregation moved into the nearby Sunday School Building after the turn of the Twenty-first Century and sold the church site. This church belongs to the United Reform Church.
The site belonged to the Roman Catholic Church for centuries before the Reformation, and after all the changes associated with the religious conflicts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries one might expect it to be a Church of England property.
However, St Mary’s-in-the-Woods, had not reverted to the Church of England at the time of the Restoration (Charles II, 1660).
At that time the site was leased the site for 999 years to a Presbyterian church, and then the freehold, the title deeds, was handed over to the Church of England.
This church later owned two more buildings: the nearby Sunday School, where they worship now, and a Missionary Chapel, now closed and sold off.
The Church of England did not have a presence in the town until St Peter’s Church was built in 1830.
The other Church of England churches, St Paul’s (1877) and St Andrew’s (1890) were built to cater for natural growth in the congregations: all three are sited within 600 yards of the Town Hall.
The Methodist Church has a long history here: there were Methodists in Morley when John Wesley visited in the 18th Century. At that time Morley was a small market town on the hills overlooking Leeds.
As the Industrial Revolution took hold, the town of Morley flourished: by the end of the 19th Century there were some 43 mills, and there were a number of coal mines, at least three were large ones. Other manufacturing businesses were established, eg the company making Davey lamps.
Three railway lines passed through the town, and two trains a week took rhubarb to London.
Many mill owners built housing and other facilities for their workers, including chapels where the hands were expected to worship in Sundays. As a class, these chapels were called Shoddy Chapels, from the cloth many of the mills produced. Every denomination/variation of Protestant belief was represented among these chapels.
As time passed and the mills and their owners changed, the chapels would lose their congregations and amalgamate, or close.
Morley Central Methodist Church, erected on the Old Chapel site, was built in 1869, there were few changes made after that, the most important being the construction of the Binns organ in 1922 as a memorial to the men who died in the Great War.
Later there were a number of amalgamations as chapel memberships reduced through the Twentieth Century- the last was in the early 1950’s when three congregations combined and settled on the plot, nearest Queen Street, ours, which included its own graveyard – now an open, green space in the built-up area of the Town.
Central Methodist graveyard, Morley
Morley is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and developed as a small market town: there will have been a place of worship from the earliest times.
St Mary’s-in-the-Wood is on the original Christian site, and the ancient, small, single-story building was replaced by a high-walled structure and steeple late in the Nineteenth Century. The congregation moved into the nearby Sunday School Building after the turn of the Twenty-first Century and sold the church site. This church belongs to the United Reform Church.
The site belonged to the Roman Catholic Church for centuries before the Reformation, and after all the changes associated with the religious conflicts of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries one might expect it to be a Church of England property.
However, St Mary’s-in-the-Woods, had not reverted to the Church of England at the time of the Restoration (Charles II, 1660).
At that time the site was leased the site for 999 years to a Presbyterian church, and then the freehold, the title deeds, was handed over to the Church of England.
This church later owned two more buildings: the nearby Sunday School, where they worship now, and a Missionary Chapel, now closed and sold off.
The Church of England did not have a presence in the town until St Peter’s Church was built in 1830.
The other Church of England churches, St Paul’s (1877) and St Andrew’s (1890) were built to cater for natural growth in the congregations: all three are sited within 600 yards of the Town Hall.
The Methodist Church has a long history here: there were Methodists in Morley when John Wesley visited in the 18th Century. At that time Morley was a small market town on the hills overlooking Leeds.
As the Industrial Revolution took hold, the town of Morley flourished: by the end of the 19th Century there were some 43 mills, and there were a number of coal mines, at least three were large ones. Other manufacturing businesses were established, eg the company making Davey lamps.
Three railway lines passed through the town, and two trains a week took rhubarb to London.
Many mill owners built housing and other facilities for their workers, including chapels where the hands were expected to worship in Sundays. As a class, these chapels were called Shoddy Chapels, from the cloth many of the mills produced. Every denomination/variation of Protestant belief was represented among these chapels.
As time passed and the mills and their owners changed, the chapels would lose their congregations and amalgamate, or close.
Morley Central Methodist Church, erected on the Old Chapel site, was built in 1869, there were few changes made after that, the most important being the construction of the Binns organ in 1922 as a memorial to the men who died in the Great War.
Later there were a number of amalgamations as chapel memberships reduced through the Twentieth Century- the last was in the early 1950’s when three congregations combined and settled on the plot, nearest Queen Street, ours, which included its own graveyard – now an open, green space in the built-up area of the Town.