wfn.org | At the Roots of Methodism: Wesley sites abound in East London

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March 12, 2001  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.     10-71B{124}

NOTE: This is a regular feature on Methodist history prepared especially for
distribution by United Methodist News Service.

A UMNS Feature
By John Singleton*
                            
Just half a mile east of Wesley's Chapel in London -- very much the hub of
John Wesley's work in building up the Methodist connectional movement in
England -- is an unobtrusive alleyway called Spital Yard.

At the end of this short, narrow cul-de-sac, not far from the major London
rail terminus of Liverpool Street, stands the house where, on Jan. 20, 1669,
Susanna Annesley was born. Susanna was to become the mother of John and
Charles Wesley (as well as their numerous brothers and sisters), and is
often referred to as the "mother of Methodism" because of her strong
influence over John's training and her later active interest in the
direction that the burgeoning Methodist movement was taking. 

By all accounts something of a disciplinarian as far as raising her children
was concerned, Susanna also had a particular sense of destiny about John.
This conviction was reinforced by the fact that, at the age of 5, he had
been dramatically rescued from an upstairs window of their Epworth Rectory
in Lincolnshire as a terrible fire raged through the family home. 

When the rescued John was brought to his father, the rector is said to have
cried out: "Come neighbors, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God! He
has given me all my eight children; let the house go -- I am rich enough!"
Susanna, who waded through the fire and scorched her legs and feet while
helping rescue her family, regarded her son's "providential escape" as a
sign that God must have some great work for him to accomplish. In later
years, John himself interpreted the incident in the same light and
acknowledged the "sovereign right" of God to his life and service.

In earlier years, when Susanna's father, the Rev. Samuel Annesley, was
ejected from St. Giles church in Cripplegate for his "nonconformity," he
built up a Dissenting church in Little St. Helen's in nearby Bishopsgate
Street. Susanna attended the Dissenting services, but by age 13, she had
renounced nonconformist theology and accepted Anglican teaching and
practice. In this resolve, she was soon to be strengthened by meeting the
Rev. Samuel Wesley, who also had become a convert from Dissent to the Church
of England. They were married in the old Marylebone parish church when
Susanna was 19 and when Samuel's stipend was £30 a year. 

The attic in the Spital Yard house where Annesley is said to have read 20
chapters of his Bible every day can still be identified, although the
building no longer belongs to Methodism and it has no public access. The
London church sites connected with the family can also be visited. 

Spital Yard is actually about as far east of Wesley's Chapel as most
pilgrims on the London Methodist heritage trail venture. That is a pity,
because only a short distance away, on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier
Street in Spitalfields, stands an imposing Wesley-linked building. It also
epitomizes the waves of immigrants who have arrived in the east end of
London over several hundred years, many escaping persecution in their
homelands. Having arrived, they settled into a community and then left, so
making way for the next group. 

Originally a Huguenot chapel built by the French Protestants in 1743, the
building was borrowed by John Wesley in 1755 to hold the first Methodist
covenant service, which was shared by a congregation of about 1,800. Wesley
subsequently borrowed the church on a number of other occasions for big
events. In the 1790s, the building was taken over by the London Society for
Promoting Christianity among the Jews. But by 1809, 18 years after Wesley's
death, it was serving as a Methodist chapel, a use that continued for nearly
90 years. 

In 1897, it was re-consecrated as the Great Synagogue for the Machzike
Hadath community of eastern European Jews, who had fled the pogroms and gone
to work in the sweated garment trades so prevalent in the area. And in 1976,
the building found yet another group of worshippers, this time in the local
Bengali community, who transformed it into what is now the London Jamme
Masjid.

Methodism's departure from the historic Spitalfields church did not spell
the end of its presence in east London. In many of the places east of
Wesley's Chapel and the old Foundry that frequently crop up in Wesley's
journal, there is still a deeply rooted Methodist presence. 

"I began visiting those of our society who lived in Bethnal Green hamlet,"
Wesley wrote in 1777. "Many of them I found in such poverty as few can
conceive without seeing it." 
In the great urban sprawl of east London, there is still a church at Bethnal
Green and also at other "hamlets" mentioned in the journal such as Poplar,
Stepney, Whitechapel, Hackney and Bow. Within a few years of Wesley's death,
other Methodist preachers were following in his footsteps in east London,
pioneers who were moved by the poverty of the slum-dwellers within such a
short distance of Wesley's Chapel. 

Times have changed, but work in the great tradition of Wesley's concern for
the poor, the homeless and the stranger, continues today. Methodist
travelers to England who are interested in visiting east London are invited
to contact the writer at the offices of the Methodist Recorder or at
John.s@methodistrecorder.co.uk.

# # #

*Singleton is assistant editor of the weekly Methodist Recorder newspaper in
London.

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