PPi M Q& 1 I he Story of M ETHODISM IN TOTLEY by JOHN DUNSTAN, M.A. UNIVERSITY v> J o f S h e f f ie l d *t ■ > g THE G'ENTRE FOR EN ^I^H CULTURAL t r a d it io n and § ^ g u a g e £:■ JS P >IWtt - Class No. a . ' w c . ^ a . 200344093 iiiiiiiiiii The Story of METHODISM IN TOTLEY by JOHN DUNSTAN, M.A. Published 1968 for the Trustees of Totley Methodist Church and available from Mr. B, Morton at 5, Terrey Road, Totley, Sheffield and from the author at 14, Leyfield Road, Dore, Sheffield. PRICE 2s. 6d. (post free 3s.) Proceeds from the sale of this book are for Methodist Home and Overseas Missions. And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest—Ezekiel 37.S. Copyright (C) John Dunstan, 1968 2 FOREWORD As I read this excellent book, I remembered my first service at “ Little Totley ”—a Harvest Festival. It was a mellow autumn afternoon. The chapel was ablaze with masses of flowers, and sweet with the scents of harvest. From the pulpit one had an incomparable view. The land fell away into the wooded valley; beyond were the purple moors and rolling hills. Somehow inside and outside were one and indivisible. It is a memory I shall never forget. That day the little church was full. On another occasion I conducted a service, with sermon and Holy Communion, complete with gleaming chalices, and then we all got into my car—a four-seater— preacher, organist, and congregation, and went home. This also had been true worship. Totley was always a “ real ” church. It was loved by its people, and it exercised a true ministry. It could not command larger numbers because of its position on the edge of the village. It was defeated at last by the old building which had become unsafe. Defeated? No. It was an honourable closure. The work had been done, and well done, across the years. Other “ spiritual homes ” were able to receive our seven members. We are fortunate to have had so excellent an historian as Mr. John Dunstan to research into our history and tell our story. In relating this small village cause to the larger movements of Methodist history he has given us a record of more than local importance. John A. Clayton. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The length of this little book bears no relation to the number of people I have to thank. I am indebted in the first place to Mr. Ben Morton, of Totley, for his unfailing co-operation, warm encouragement and useful suggestions, and to the Rev. John A. Clayton, Superintendent of the Fjcclesall Circuit, for the interest he has always shown, not. least in allowing me to inspect deeds and other docu­ ments in liia custody and consenting to write the foreword. I should also like to thank: Rev. Dr. Oliver A. Beckerlegge, Superintendent of the Roseland Circuit, Cornwall; Dr. Keith Blackburn, of Totley; Dr. John C. Bowmer, Connexional Archivist; Rev. W. R. E. Clarke, Superintendent of the Sheffield Brunswick Circuit; Mr. and Mrs. George Green, of Keighley; Rev. H. C. C. Lannigan, Superintendent of the Sheffield Carver Street Circuit, and Mrs. Bell; Mr. E. Lewis, Secretary to the Ecclesall Circuit Chapel Committee; Miss Rosamond Meredith, Sheffield City Archivist, and Mrs. Cass and staff of the Department of Local History, Sheffield Central Library; Rev. George Pollard, Superintendent of the Sheffield Mission, and Miss Hall; Rev. Henry Rack of Hartley Victoria College, Manchester; Mr. David B. Robinson, Joint Record Office, Lichfield; Mr. Shaw, Depart­ ment of Chapel Affairs, Manchester; Miss Joan Sinar, Derbyshire County Archivist, and Mr. Williams; Mr. Ronald V. Steer, of Oxford; Mr. Arthur Turner, of Totley; Mrn. .loan Wileman, my research assistant; and Mrs. Doris Wilkin, of Totley Rise. The picture of George Wainwright was painted in 1809 by the Leeds artist Charles Henry Schwanfelder (1773—1837) and presented in 1920 by W. C. Mitchell Withers to the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, who retain the copyright and whose permission to reproduce the portrait is gratefully acknowledged. It was photo­ graphed under difficult technical conditions by Mr. Lambert Smith. The drawing on the cover is from the original by James Everett. The plan of Totley is based on George Sanderson’s Enclosure Award map. The photographs of Totley Chapel are by Mr. Ben Morton. John D unstan. 4 CHAPTER ONE At the crack of dawn on Monday, June 14th, 1742, a little parson, returning on horseback by a zig-zag route from his first evangelistic tour in the north of England, set out once again. “ Having a great desire to see David Taylor, whom God had made an instrument of good to many souls, I rode to Sheffield; but not finding him there, I was minded to go forward immediately; however, the importunity of the people constrained me to stay, and preach* both in the evening and in the morning.” In fact, John Wesley preached four times. David Taylor, of Fulwood, converted under John’s Oxford Methodist contemporary, Benjamin Ingham, had been doing spare-time evangelistic work in Sheffield and the villages on its southern fringe since 1738; this had evidently been fruitful, but was suffering from the lack of a proper follow-up. For all the people’s pleading, it was not until the fourth time, on the Wednesday morning, that John felt God’s Spirit at work among them. We can take June 16th, 1742, as the date of the true beginning of Methodism in Sheffield. One wonders whether any of the folk who were to become the first Methodists at Totley and Woodseats were among those who entreated and those who were moved. George Wainwright, the 28-year-old Bamford-born weaver, now plying his trade in Dronfield, and destined to become the father of Methodism in Totley? Sarah Green, of Totley, who was to suffer so much indignity for her beliefs? Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Booth, formerly of Summerley near Dronfield, recently married to a Woodseats sicklesmith and small farmer and in due time to have the joy of being the means of his conversion and with him to become host to John Wesley and his preachers and a real power for good in the district? In all, John made some thirty-eight visits to Sheffield. He would have come fairly near to Totley—probably over the moors between Dore and Ringinglow—on four occasions between 1744 and 1753 when riding into Sheffield from the Peak; his nearest route from Chelmorton and * The mteeting house was in Cheney Square, traces of which survive in the name of Cheney Walk, alongside the Town Hall. The famous allusion to “ the largest congregation I ever saw on a weekday ” in Paradise Square dates from Wtesley’s 29th visit to Sheffield on iBth July, 1779. 5 Taddington, the early centres of High Peak Methodism, would have been via Longstone, Hassop, Calver and Grindleford. The turnpike roads had yet to be built. On June 5th, 1753, he mentioned a visit to Jonathan and Elizabeth Booth at Woodseats. According to John Austen, Booth Farm lay where Fraser Road now joins Holmhirst Road, 200 yards north of Woodseats library. The young wife had first found her husband very hostile !o Method lam, but this did not deter her. In his lliirmiurvu. Hkktciikh ok Wesleyan Methodism in SiiKi'i'iKM* James Everett remarks: “ She generally attended preaching at Shellield at five o’clock in the morning, carrying the child in her arms that she was then nursing.” Altogether she nursed nine of them between 1743 and 1762, five girls and four boys, all but one of whom survived infancy. Her firstborn, also called Elizabeth, when nearly ten, fell a victim to a mysterious and violent mental and physical illness affecting her for almost five months and then vanishing without trace. She was perfectly restored to health and later was to marry John Oliver, for a time one of Wesley’s itinerant preachers. Wesley heard the whole story of her torment from the Booths a month after her recovery; he was impressed enough to record the episode in his Journal, and not surprisingly it seems to have had a traumatic effect on the father. Doubtless his wife’s deep faith also exerted no small influence on him. Mrs. Booth, for all her family commitments, was very active in attending prayer meetings and exhorting over a wide area, including Totley; now her husband joined her in the work and evidently made it. his special duty to guide the travelling preachers on their way to the local preaching places. With the accretions of the last hundred years, it is not easy for us to cast our thoughts back in time and picture the village of Totley as it was in the mid-eighteenth century. Imagine an L-shaped bridleway with the original hamlet clustering round the outside of the right- angle and extending south a little way down Totley Hall Lane. To the north, the way ran past Oldhay, through Dore with its chapel-of-ease attended by the faithful of Totley and the place where their children were baptised, along Limb Lane, up the dark and mysterious path which can still be glimpsed from Whirlow Bridge, behind Whirlow Hall, and so eventually to Sheffield. To the east 0 it went down Mickley Lane, athwart the hill on the other side, that is to say between the present Wollaton Road and Longford Drive, and thus to Bradway and Greenhill.