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You can find out more about John Wesley here:
http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Wesley_Journal.pdf
Barbara Murfin nee Sarney born 1940s
Methodist Chapel
My grandmother, Granny Sarney, was a Quaker, so did not hold with sloe gin or anything else that included alcohol. My grandfather, Gent, signed the pledge. So my father Sim was brought up Methodist. However Granny Sarney made gallons of ginger beer. You had a ginger beer 'plant' in a huge glass sweetie jar. It was fed with yeast and sugar, halved once a week, half kept as the mother plant and the other half diluted put into tightly sealed bottles and drunk about ten days later. Sugar and yeast? Teetotal I think not, but it tasted really good.
In spite of his upbringing the only time my father went anywhere near the chapel was to drop us off at Sunday School after Sunday lunch. Methodist Sunday School often being held in the Temperance Hall, now Chapel Dental Surgery, on Heath End Road.
The Methodist Chapel was popular as they had a hall for functions. The hall was completely separate from the chapel. Brownies held their meetings there, their mushrooms being left on the stage during the intervening time. The main hall was quite a big room. Enough for tables to house 50 children plus a little space at the bottom by the stage. Above the stage was a map, many countries in red, the banner on the map proclaiming the sun never sets on the British empire.
The Methodist Hall, up to the opening of Carrington School, was full of the fourth year school things, brownie things, the odd toadstool or two on the stage area and other things that were stored there. The little lean too kitchen was worse than a scullery. A cold water tap, a huge white sink, and damp enough to have water constantly running down the walls. The toilet, I must say a flush toilet, was through the kitchen along a little path to the sentry box toilet. Flush toilets were certainly not the norm in the village before mains drainage arrived.
The Old Village School was the only other building large enough to hold more than a handful of people. I remember Girl Guides were held there weekly, and I think Cubs used the room too. But Brownies met up with their toadstools in the Methodist hall.
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