Published at 13:22, Thursday, 17 April 2008

RELIGIOUS wars broke out in England in the early 1800s, and though these particular doctrinal dust-ups were fairly un-bloody, they involved a great deal of shouting.

Changing hands: Henshaw's former Primitive Methodist chapel could soon be a family home.

The Primitive Methodists called “Ranters” from their impassioned preaching, broke away from the Wesleyan Methodists around 1810, and set up their own style of worship.

In the small village of Henshaw, just off the A69, two large Methodist chapels stand within a stone’s throw of each other, one for the Wesleyans, and the other for those of the “Ranter” persuasion.

Both have been – or are about to be – family homes now, but they stand as solid evidence from those hot-blooded days of religious dissent nearly two centuries ago.

The Primitives or Ranters had launched themselves away from the main body of Methodism when the sect begun 80 years earlier by John Wesley was 87,000 strong and as popular as chips.

But being part of a massive cultural phenomenon was not enough for one young convert, Hugh Bourne. He wanted to worship as the spirit moved him, with big open-air meetings and everyone having their say – back to the roots stuff.

The mainstream Methodists thought Bourne and his rapidly-amassing followers were a bit embarrassing. In 1808 they expelled him like a rowdy schoolboy, saying his style was “improper” and “likely to be productive of considerable mischief”.

The kind of thing that outraged orthodox Methodists was Bourne’s “camp meetings” – like pop concerts with pulpits – which he arranged all over the North and Midlands. They lasted all day and sometimes through the night, come rain or shine, with hundreds of enthusiastic rookie preachers getting their chance at spreading the word.

The fervent Ranter style spread like wildfire through the North, appealing especially to the young. In 1822 travelling Ranter preachers arrived in orthodox Hexham with all the celebrity pizzazz of a rival football team or the latest X-Factor winners.

A bellman or town crier was sent through the town loudly advertising that a Primitive Methodist missionary would preach the next day in the Old Malt Kiln on Battle Hill.

The place was packed with “many stout-hearted sinners trembling during the powerful services”. And in spite of “bricks and stones being often thrown by the ungodly, many souls were turned to the Lord in the Old Kiln”.

By 1830 the Ranters had their own chapel on Bull Bank – now called Hallstile Bank – and their more-impressive Hebbron Memorial Chapel was built in 1862.

Meanwhile the Primitives of Hexham spread in all directions, with teams of travelling preachers walking as far as Haltwhistle, Morpeth and Rothbury to take services.

In 1836 the Primitive Methodists built their own chapel at Henshaw. They made it of stone to last, and they made it big enough for a congregation of 150 people.

By 1885 they had to enlarge it, clubbing together to pay £390 – nearly £28,500 in today’s money. In 1905 they added a Sunday school.

Local landowner Richard Thompson had donated the land for the chapel and a field for regular outdoor camp meetings, after being converted by the legendary preacher William Towler, superintendent of the Hexham circuit.

Richard enjoyed camp meetings, not just for the powerful jolt of the word, but also because they gave him and his brother a chance to air their double act – Richard was a composer and his brother William was the local Bryn Terfel.

When Henshaw got its new Ranters’ chapel the Wesleyans were determined not to be left behind.

In the 1840s the mother lode of UK Methodism mined new resources of energy to combat dissenting offshoots. They started a huge national programme of chapel and school building, and Henshaw’s Wesleyan Methodist chapel was among the first of this wave to be built. It could seat 100 and it too needed expanding by 1897.

And by 1889 Henshaw’s population of 574 added Church of England to their two flavours of dissenting.

The early English style All Hallows Church was erected near the village school at a cost of £1,200, including an acre of land, an organ chamber, and a turret with one bell.

By the 1930s the UK Methodist Church, which had frayed into four or five different movements during the previous century, pulled itself together again. The Ranters agreed to rejoin the parent sect in 1932.

At Henshaw their chapel continued as a place of worship until the 1940s. Then after a time of disuse it was bought by the Women’s Institute in 1952 and carried on being a hub of community life.

And after 54 years of ‘jam and Jerusalem’, village flower shows and school craft fairs, Henshaw’s chapel-cum-hall has been sold again, with plans for transforming it into a home, either for a family or for holiday lets.

l The former Methodist Chapel at Henshaw is for sale via Foster Maddison of Priestpopple, Hexham,

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk