lancashiretodundee

In 1851 a report was presented to a Commons committee on non-conformist churches and chapels in England and Wales giving numbers as follows: Wesleyan 4,450 Independent 2,572 Baptist 1,943 Primitive Methodist 1,662 Roman Catholic 597 Calvinistic Methodist 778 Bible Christian 415 Society of Friends 330 Wesleyan Methodist Assn 322 Methodist New Connection 281 Unitarian 260 Church of Scotland 12 Free Church of Scotland 77 United Presbyterian Church 61 Lady Huntingdon's Connection 30 New Jerusalem Church Jews Minor sects 350 There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from these statistics. Remember that these are churches that are not Anglican, but not necessarily orthodox, creedal Christian, or even Christian in any sense. If you merge together the different flavours of Methodism, you find that 52% of the churches were Methodist. That is an impressive proportion. It may be even bigger, as I excluded Bible Christian as this is ambiguous. It could mean the Bibl...

 On the same newspaper page as the New Jerusalem minister Rev Baylay's advert of 1839 for his private school in Church, there is an advert for a nightly stagecoach from Preston departing 7 pm arriving Newcastle 9 am. This is before the railway came, but after the turnpike roads were built. This timing is very impressive even though there were no hostile injuns or robber gangs with hankies around the nose and mouth. The early 19th C was a boom time for stagecoaches. The idea that there were no decent roads until the 20th C is misplaced. Want to go South? The Defiance will get you from Manchester to London in 30 hours in 1799. Would you like to go sea-bathing at the genteel resort of Blackpool? A new coach service (new in 1836) leaves from the Legs of Man Inn, Blackburn at 6:45 am for Mr Simpson's Royal Hotel, Blackpool, returning at 3 pm to arrive back in Blackburn at 8 pm. I would not recommend this trip now. There were many other adverts for scheduled services.