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Our History

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For a description of our Wesleyan Chapel from 1893 to the present, click here to read an article that appeared in the December 2009 issue of Church Buildings magazine. (Click the + symbol to enlarge the print).

From 1837 until our present chapel was built, Wesleyan Methodists met in their church in the Friarage Passage. This ran through the site of a fourteenth century friary. The chapel was later used as the Comrades (Ex Services) Club before being demolished as part of the shopping centre development.

In New Street, opposite the former Royal Bucks Hospital, there was also a Primitive Methodist Chapel which existed until the 1960s, reflecting the old split in Methodism between 'Prims' and Wesleyans.

For a further look into local history, the following books may be of interest:

Old Aylesbury by Elliott Viney and Pamela Nightingale.
Aylesbury – A Pictorial History by Hugh Hanley and Julian Hunt.
Around Aylesbury by Martin Andrew.
Aylesbury Past and Present by Karl Vaughan.
A Century of Aylesbury also by Karl Vaughan

For more distant history try:
The Rise of Methodism in the Vale of Aylesbury 1772 – 1791 E R Bates. The following is an extract provided by Peter Farmer:

At the January 1770 Aylesbury Quarter Sessions John Hester was granted a licence to use Walton House in Aylesbury as a place of worship although there is little evidence of its use for worship until Thomas Higgins was granted a similar licence in 1781. However, in 1776, John Valton, an itinerant appointed to the Oxford Circuit, noted in his diary that he "became at home with the Aylesbury Society" and, on a subsequent visit, noted that "this evening, I preached with great power and life in the parish of Aylesbury cum Walton"
Bates suggests that, in 1772, the Weedon house of John Seamons was registered as a place of worship, by Samuel Wells a Methodist preacher with the support of a Baptist pastor from Chesham. Two years later, the Waddesden home, of William Goodson was registered for worship at the Midsummer Quarter Sessions at Aylesbury. Assisted by the Waddesden society, a Methodist presence was established in Quainton in the same year. In 1786 the Whitchurch home of Richard Welch was registered and the first Methodist meeting was held "in an old house in Castle Lane" In 1786 a Methodist Society was established in Bierton by James Durley, described as a key man in the development of Methodism in the whole of the Vale of Aylesbury.

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