Harwood Methodist Church

The Methodist church of Harwood, in the Bolton Circuit. The congregation is the union of two older societies, and the photographs here show both the Victorian chapel and the modern church that carries the name today.

Primitive Methodist beginnings

Primitive Methodist preaching began at Harwood Lee, some two and a half miles from Bolton, in the summer of 1837. A society formed and met at first in the house of James Maden; when he moved away it rented a property, opening a Sunday school there on 7 April 1839. By then it had 34 members and 93 children on the school books.

The members built their first chapel by 1841 — a plain building twenty-two yards square — and finished it more than £100 in debt to the contractor. Edward Lomax secured a loan of £100 from John Ashworth so that the deeds could be obtained, and the indentures were drawn up on 18 January 1842. A vestry was added around 1853 for some £14, and in 1868 the building was enlarged with two further vestries at a cost of about £120. A much larger Sunday school followed in 1889–90, costing £1,400 including its boundary walls, with an organ at £350.

One church

In 2009 Tottington Road Methodist Church united with Longsight Methodist Church to form a single Harwood Methodist Church, which the Methodist Church lists at Longsight, Harwood.

Which of the two buildings photographed here is in regular use, and the date of the modern church, are not settled by any published source we have found. Corrections from the congregation would be very welcome — please get in touch.

Sources: My Primitive Methodists; Turton Local History Society; The Methodist Church.