Fleetwood, Lancashire

Fleetwood is a coastal town on the Irish sea at the North end of the Fylde peninsula in Lancashire. It was developed from the 1830s as a port and seaside resort by Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood.

Among the earliest inhabitants of the new town were the Roskell and Ronson families; Alice Ronson was a Methodist, and she hosted the first Methodist preaching in the town in 1837. The Garstand Wesleyan minister George Hughes (1809-90) preached to the workers building the new town. A class-meeting was formed around 1840 and services began in a room over the workshop of Thomas Heaps, Local Preacher and owner of a joinery and building business.A chapel was built in 1846-47, replaced by a new building in 1899.

A Primitive Methodist society was formed in 1851 and a chapel opened in Lord Street in 1855, enlarged and renamed St George's Church in 1875. This building was replaced by a new school and chapel on the corner of Promenade and Mount Street in 1907-08.

Sources
  • John Taylor, The apostles of Fylde Methodism (London: T. Woolmer,1885).
  • 'Local: Opening of the Wesleyan Chapel', Fleetwood Chronicle, 28 May 1847, page 2.
  • 'Fleetwood Wesleyan New Church', Fleetwood Chronicle, 3 February 1899, page 6.
  • 'Wesleyanism at Fleetwood. Opening the New Chapel', Fleetwood Chronicle, 29 September 1899, page 8.

Entry written by: DHR
Category: Place
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