Southend and Leigh on Sea

Southend in the parish of Prittlewell was no more than one of the scattered villages in the Rochford Hundred until it began its rapid development in the 1840s. It became a separate parish in 1842. About this time the earliest references to Methodism occur. The house of Benjamin Johnson, shoemaker, was registered for worship in 1841 by the Wesleyan minister John Morgan of Chelmsford. Two years later his successor James Aldis registered the dwelling house of a Miss Dovey to be 'opened and continued as a place of public worship'. The following decades saw the population grow from 3,375 in 1861 to 28,793 in 1901. Southend became a borough in 1904, the year in which the diocese of Chelmsford was crreated.

John Wesley's Journal records visiting the 'little flock at Leigh' nine times between1748 and 1758; and that may provide a clue to his reason for visiting so out- of- the- way a part of the country. But with the silting up of the harbour, it was not until 1811 that the first chapel was built in Leigh at the end of Hadleigh Road. The building of the new railway line in the 1850s caused them to seek a different site and in 1861 a new chapel was opened in High Street with the help of compensation from the railway company. 18 years later a further move became necessary because of a serious structural problem and a third church was opened in New Road in1889, to be replaced by the present New Road church in 1932. Known for many years as 'the Fishermen's Chapel, this survived the effect of the war years, including the evacuation of its children in 1939, and provided a refuge for the residents of Canvey Island made homeless by the floods of 1953.

Wesley, Elm Road was opened in 1897 to meet the growing population of Leigh. During World War 1 its hall was intermittently used by the military stationed locally.

The first Methodist church to be built in Southend itself was on the Eastern Esplanade, closec to the emerging Kursaaal amusement park and adjacent to the Castle Inn (now demolished). It was oppened in October 1861 by a group of fishermen under the leadership of a convert fisherman and local preacher named Michael Tomlin. But after some controversy with the Wesleyan Circuit authorities they chose to be called the Wesleyan Free Church and it eventually became part the United Methodist Church in 1915. This was replaced by a new church builidng in1924 located in Woodgrange Drive , just north of The Kursaal and named the Michael Tomlin Memorial Church. This memorial church survived until 1955, when it was absorbed by a new church in Whittingham Avenue (now the United Methodist Church, Whittingham Avenue).

The earliest Wesleyan church in Southend was built in Park Road and opened in 1871 on a site given to them them on the Park Estate. By the time of World War II this church was in decline and eventually closed in 1997.

Leigh was at first in the Essex Mission, became the head of a circuit from 1810 to 1822 and again from 1854 until renamed the Southend Circuit in 1870.

Three churches in the growing suburb of Westcliff-on-Sea, all originating around the turn of the 19th century, were brought together in 1973 to form a single church renamd Trinity: Argyle Road, formerly United Methodist (1902)), Beedell Avenue Prinitive Methodist (an iron chapel, opened 1905, replaced 1926) and Wesley Hall, West Street (opened 1900; extendd 1926)

The history of Methodism in the area, including Southend and Leigh on Sea, has been chronicled in detail by George Thompson Brake in a series of booklets, The History of the Methodist Church in theSouthend and Leigh Circuit.

Quotations

'I remember the fishermen I came in contact with years ago in Leigh-on-Sea. They were old men with no scholarship. They told me of their thoughts; the things they said within themselves as they sailed with the stars and the wild waters about and beneath them. For sheer poetry I have never heard more beautiful things than fell from the lips of those unlettered men. It was the poetry of the grace of God.'

Rev. Alfred E. Whitham

Sources
  • George Thompson Brake, The History of the Methodist Church in the Southend and Leigh Circuit (1994)

Category: Place
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