Nenthead Wesleyan Methodist church Villiage Scene Cumberland

Nenthed Wesleyan Methodist Church Village Scene Cumberland

The Quaker-owned London Lead Company, lessee of the area’s mines, was keen to encourage nonconformist faith within its mining communities and, in common with many villages in the North Pennines, Nenthead was provided with both a Primitive and a Wesleyan Methodist chapel. John Wesley is known to have preached in the area in the mid and later C18. In 1826, the London Lead Company gifted a site upon which a Wesleyan chapel was erected; the footprint of this building is depicted on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 as a rectangular building with smaller blocks appended to either end. In 1873, the present chapel was constructed and its depiction on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1890 shows it to occupy the site of the central and eastern block of the first chapel; this suggests that the original western block remained standing and it is thought that it was used as a Sunday school to the new chapel. The two Methodist congregations in the village joined in the 1930s and thereafter used only the Wesleyan Chapel.