Emley Wesleyan Methodist Church

The following source list was originally available only on paper in one of the West Yorkshire Archive Service offices. It may have been compiled many years ago and could be out of date. It was designed to act as a signpost to records of interest on a particular historical subject, but may relate only to one West Yorkshire district, or be an incomplete list of sources available.

Johnathan Bedford of Emley Woodhouse attended class meetings at Briestfield and the leader there, John Green, visited Emley at times to preach in the period before 1768. Emley was a preaching centre in the Birstall Circuit, 1776. Class meetings were held at Emley by 1798, the class had been linked with Shelley Wesleyan Church but the members remained Wesleyans when Shelley went to the New Connexion in 1797. John Silverwood's shop was licensed as a meeting house in 1798 and the site of this shop is now part of Emley parish church graveyard. Emley became a preaching centre in the Barnsley Wesleyan Methodist Circuit in 1809 and a chapel was built in 1826 on Warburton Road. Many members of the congregation became Wesleyan Reformers in c1849 including all but two of the men who attended the chapel, the chapel never completely recovered from this split and the chapel was altered in 1876. It closed in 1913 and the building became two houses.