A brief history of Wylam Methodist Church
The original Wesleyan Chapel in Wylam was built in 1834. In 1875, to accommodate a growing Church membership, a new chapel was built and the old chapel converted to a school room. In 1889 the school room was extended and a small cottage built for the caretaker. Although facilities were progressively improved over the years, the buildings used by the Church for worship and other activities remained the same until the late 1980s when a major building project was undertaken to build a new hall, toilets and kitchen. At the same time the pews were removed and the church was reordered, allowing it to be connected to the old school room by a sliding screen when a larger space was required. This building project was completed in 1990.
The building was extended and refurbished in 2016
Although the building continued to be in good repair, as the first decade of the 21st Century came to a close it was becoming apparent that the building was too small to effectively run some of the children and young people’s activities that we were trying to run. As conversations developed we also recognised that the layout of the building meant it was not always suitable for multiple users and presented accessibility problems for other users. Thus, after prayerful consideration the vision ‘Room 2 Grow’ was developed. In November 2015 work began to extend the building to create a light new meeting room and large entrance space. The reordering of other rooms and the levelling of the ground floor also helped provide new spaces, greater flexiblity of room use and improved access for all.
The pictures below show aspects of the building after the refurbishment and extensions of ‘Room 2 Grow’ were completed in the summer of 2016. The ‘new’ Wylam Methodist Church Centre is a wonderful worship and community space to serve a growing church and its community in the 21st Century.
