DIDSBURY with BARLOW MOOR
METHODIST CHURCH
METHODISM IN DIDSBURY
"John Wesley is said to have visited Stockport for the first time in 1757. Methodism had established itself in that town by about 1748 and had reached Heaton Mersey in Wesley's lifetime (he died in 1791). One of the earliest 'Classes' of Methodist members met at Burnage and from that early 'Class' Methodism in Didsbury appears to have been an offshoot, beginning in about 1790.
In 1830 two Heaton Mersey women, a Mrs Rigby and the wife of a gardener came to look for a place where the Didsbury people might meet regularly and they found a cottage - one of several occupied mainly by hand-loom weavers - in a side road later known as Hardman Street and now called School Lane.
Mrs Betty Johnson's cottage was in that part of the road where there is now a Car Park adjoining Warburton Street. Her name figures largely in the early records and her cottage was the first meeting place in the locality. It was not long before the Johnson cottage was too small. A move was made to a room over the shop, on the main road, of the smith and wheelwright, James Worsley and here the Methodists met for nearly nine years. The room served as chapel and Sunday School. Later occupants of the premises were Mycock's the plumbers.
(so wrote Mr. E.C. Sackett in 1977)
During the nineteenth century Methodist worship developed in two congregations, at Albert Hill Street and St. Paul's. Our present premises date from 1991, when the two congregations, having joined together some years previously as Didsbury Methodist Church, left their old buildings behind and moved into our modern, refurbished, premises. It is in these that we worship, meet for fellowship and which forms the base from which we seek to serve the community.
We remember with thankfulness the past but look with anticipation and faith towards the future and all that it holds for us and perhaps also for you!
