Meetings began in 1832
Wesleyan meetings began in West Mersea in 1832. A Welsh coastguard officer named Hughes initially held services at his Coast Road home. When the congregation outgrew the house, meetings moved to a barn in Barfield Road.
The early services in Hughes’s house are known from later recollections rather than surviving meeting minutes. William Chatters’s history reports that no contemporary record identifies exactly where in Coast Road the coastguard lived.
The barn later served as a workshop for Day’s buses and was still standing near the school in the 1930s.
The chapel opened on 10 July 1861
A purpose-built Wesleyan chapel opened in Mill Road on Wednesday 10 July 1861. It was constructed of white brick with a slate roof, cost £300 and accommodated 250 people. The morning service was preached by the Reverend G. Blanchflower, formerly a minister at Colchester.
The opening drew more people than the chapel could accommodate. Around 150 guests dined in a marquee near Rewsals Hall Farm, East Mersea, and 290 attended tea. The evening service was held outside. John Ward of Rewsals Hall, one of the chapel’s first trustees, made his grounds available for the gathering.
The opening account records £20 collected at the evening service and nearly £40 raised over the day. A story that the white bricks came from a demolished hall in Fingringhoe has circulated locally, but Chatters could find no record to substantiate it. The chapel’s date, dimensions and cost are documented more securely than that origin story.
A weekday school in the chapel
The Wesleyan community also ran a day school. In 1863 teaching took place in the wooden Barfield Road barn; later the children used a classroom behind the Mill Road chapel and space inside the chapel itself. Kelly’s Directory still listed the Wesleyan day school in 1882. Its weekly fees were one penny for children aged seven and under, and twopence for older pupils.
The same building thus served both worship and weekday education, while the earlier Barfield Road barn took on other uses. The two venues should not be confused with the separate Congregational schoolroom at Top Chapel, also in Mill Road.
Mill Road
The Wesleyan chapel later became known as West Mersea Methodist Church. The Free Church, historically called Top Chapel, also stands in Mill Road but developed from a separate Congregational and Baptist tradition.
Historical record
William Chatters’s chapel history, including the 1861 opening account ↗