Methodism in Penketh

There is some uncertainty as to who actually introduced Methodism into Penketh. One reference tells of services being held by Wesleyan Preachers from Warrington in a cottage in Cobblers’ Square, Penketh and states that “these must have been before those at Mr. Percival’s farm”. Another reference, which also does not quote an actual date, tells of George Percival who came to farm in the village from ‘somewhere in Cheshire’. One record says that he came from Crowley, whilst another record simply tells that George Percival and his son, also George, were both local preachers at Yatehouse,near to Middlewich. However, we do know that a George Percival came to live in Penketh in the early years of the nineteenth·century and opened his home for services between the years 1812 and 1815. It may have been that the cottage in Cobblers’ Square would not hold all who wished to join and that services were then held at George Percival’s farm. All this was done with the full knowledge and support of the Methodists at Bank Street. From the days of John Wesley,,chapels were geographically grouped together into ‘Circuits’. One of Methodism’s strengths is the Circuit System whereby associated members act together for the furtherance of the work in their own particular area.

In those days of early work in Penketh, Warrington Methodist Circuit included, amongst other places, Runcorn, Preston Brook, Halton and Lymm. One of our earliest records, a Circuit ‘Plan’ of preachers appointed to conduct services and dated Sunday, 12th July, 1818 to Sunday 3rd January, 1819, shows that services were held at Penketh each Sunday at 2.0 in the afternoon and 6.0 in the evening. It was not until the following 30th May (1819) that a chapel was built on a plot of land at the corner of what is now Stocks Lane and the old section of Warrington Road, opposite to where St. Paul’s Church now stands. The section of roadway between the Crown and Cushion Inn and the Red Lion Inn was known as “Top Lane”. The building erected in 1819 seated 70 persons and was used for worship until 1860 when the deterioration of the fabric and its total inadequacy to hold the number of those who wished to worship necessitated the building of the present church in Chapel Road, then known as ‘Red Lion Lane’.

The people most prominently associated with the building of the new chapel were Dr. Joseph. Smith, who gave the land on which the premises stand, the Garnett family, well-known cabinet makers in Warrington, and Gilbert Greenall the well-known brewer, who was later Member of Parliament for Warrington from 1847 to 1868. Dr. Smith lived in Ash Villa, then at the corner of Hall Nook, and he was not only a medical man but was also a popular local preacher. It was fitting that the new building should be opened during 1859-1860 when Dr. Smith was Mayor of Warrington. In the following year a Sunday School/Day School was opened and a teacher’s house built. The building of houses in the village, for the population had grown from 784 in 1861. to 1239 in 1881, and the lively work and witness of those Victorian Methodists, resulted in the chapel being extended in 1877 to accommodate 80 more worshippers. Robert Garnett, Senior, who, with his family had been a tower of strength to the cause of Christ not only in Penketh but also in Great Sankey because of his close associatio? with friends at St. Mary’s Church, died on 21st April, 1877. His son, Robert Garnett, Junior, defrayed the entire cost of enlarging the building in memory of his father.

Ten years later the school premises had to be enlarged and four years after that, in 1891, it became necessary again to extend the chapel and the building of the vestibule and gallery brought the entrance very near to the road, as it’is at present. At the same time, at the east end, new vestries were built and room created for the organ and choir. Also at this time, gas was installed, gas mantles were added in 1903 and the change to electricity took place in 1926.