Description | Summary
Circuit administration Quarterly Meeting minutes, 1916-1940; Finance and Invitation Committee minutes, 1916-1940; Sunday School Council minutes, 1912-1942, and accounts, 1926-1951.
Preaching plans and directories Plans and directories, 1877-1940.
Local preachers' meeting Minutes, 1868-1944; accounts, 1924-1968.
Circuit registration Register of baptisms, 1836-1875, 1900.
Miscellaneous Maps of Reading Free Church parishes, 1898; Reading Methodist magazine, 1938; Twentieth Century Fund Historic Roll of subscribers, c.1900; Methodist Pocket Book, 1813; photograph of Revd A Elliott, n.d. [c1920s]; press cutting, 1932.
Concordance The following documents were formerly catalogued as D/N 6 :
Old Reference - New Reference
D/N 6/1/1: D/MC 1/6A/1
D/N 6/1/2: D/MC 1/1A/1
D/N 6/1/3: D/MC 1/1A/2
D/N 6/1/4: D/MC 1/1A/3
D/N 6/1/5: D/MC 1/5A/1-15 |
Admin History | Although John Wesley preached many times in Reading between 1739 and 1777, Methodism declined there after his death in 1791. Hall's Circuits and Ministers (see Bibliography) names Joseph Scott as the first circuit minister in 1811, and the revival was sparked in 1815 by the Revd. John Waterhouse. The Reading society flourished, and new societies were formed at Wokingham, Burghfield and Twyford, and at Blackwater (in Hampshire) and Henley and Whitchurch Hill (in Oxfordshire) (see V. M. Ayres, As Stupid As Oxen).
The development of the Reading Wesleyan circuit thereafter is difficult to follow, since few records survive from the 19th century other than the baptism register. The earliest preaching plan we have is from 1893; there are no Quarterly Meeting minutes before 1916; and there are no circuit schedules at all. Local preachers' meeting minutes from 1868 (D/MC 1/6A/1), indicating new places to be put on plan, places to be taken off, and places where times of services were to be changed, are the only internal source of information on the area covered by the circuit until 1893, when the plan shows three societies in Reading and eight in the surrounding district (D/MC1/5A/1/1). By 1940, when the circuit (now called Wesley) united with the former Reading Primitive Methodist (London Street) circuit (D/MC2), slight changes in the plan had taken place but the total number of societies remained the same (D/MC1/5A/12/4).
The lack of early Reading Wesleyan Methodist circuit records is offset by the fact that complete runs of local preachers' meeting minutes from 1868, preaching plans from 1893 and Quarterly Meeting and committee minutes from 1916 exist until union in 1940. |
Access Conditions | With the exception of registers of baptism, marriage and burial, and other material whose contents have been made public, records of the Methodist Church are closed for 30 years, and pastoral records for 75 years, in accordance with Methodist Church standing orders.
Applications for access to closed records must be made in writing to the County Archivist. |