Bath, Weston Wesleyan Methodist Chapel

The early Methodists in Weston met initially at the home of one of its members, Joseph Loscombe.

The first licence issued by the Bishop of Bath and Wells was dated July 30^th 1812. For many years the meetings were led by Jasper Jones and the meeting places varied and are not easily identifiable from the scant records available, but seemed to change between Locksbrook Brassmills and the village of Weston and perhaps at other places along the Bristol Road out of Bath, all of which were outside the city boundaries at the time.

Despite the low membership of the various groups meeting in the “Weston” area, a local businessman, Mr T Owen, had purchased a piece of land fronting the Bristol Road at Newbridge Hill, for the erection of a new chapel.

The “committee” which was set up to take the project forward included the Revds. Bowden and Robinson and messrs. Tabb, Fox-Andrews, Hancock, Pornforth and Southwell, and later included messrs. Bladwell, Jefferson and Short.

Robert Curwen MRIBA, (see Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (https://dmbi.online) , a London based architect ,who had local family connections in Bristol – (The Mays) and who had undertaken a number of other local chapel commissions, was appointed to design the building, and a local contractor, J Long and Sons, was the builder.

The work started in 1890 and the opening ceremony took place on Tuesday 2^nd June 1891, the cost being about £2350.

Under a re-organisation of churches in the Bath Section of the North East Somerset and Bath Circuit the building is not likely to be used for regular worship in the future, with four churches in the city linking to form one Society, the Bath Methodist Church.

These notes have been prepared from “A History of Methodism in Weston” by Ian Duffy (1984) and grateful thanks are due to him. This document is currently under revision and updating to co-incide with the closure of (Lower) Weston Methodist Church.

Note  Although the church is always known as Weston Methodist Church, it is in fact situated in Lower Weston and has until very recently been designated Lower Weston Methodist Church by the Methodist Property Division.  The village of Weston (not Upper Weston) was only included within the Bath City boundary in the early 1950s.