Final farewell to Newbiggin Chapel

Just after 9pm on a Wednesday last month, Teesdale lost its claim of having the world’s oldest Methodist chapel with unbroken service. Editor Trevor Brookes was there to see history being made and the doors closed for good.

ON a sunlit evening, the congregation filed out of Newbiggin Methodist Chapel one last time.
A few moments earlier, the final words had been spoken at a service filled with praise, song and defiance that this wasn’t the end of the message of Methodism in upper Teesdale after more than 250 years.
Tribute was paid to all those who had trooped through those wooden doors during two centuries, all those who had sat in the pews and sang hymns, all those who had been baptised and all those who had warmed their hands on the pot-bellied stove in the hard winters of upper Teesdale.
The chapel had been built to serve the lead miners and was constructed by their own hands. It opened in 1760 and the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, preached from the pulpit. But changing times meant that there were just two members remaining this year– Lillian Mitchell and Sylvia Scott. The third, Mary Lowes, had died in 2016.
Methodist leaders agreed the historic chapel should close – like so many before it in Teesdale – and it will now go on the market.
About 70 people turned up to give the chapel a rousing send off last week.
Among them was former Teesdale Methodist minister Richard Hunter.
“There’s an aura about the place. It’s soaked in Methodist history and it just gets you. It has this feel – an atmosphere. We’ll miss it,” he said.
As he greeted the chapel’s congregation before the service began, the chapel secretary Alan Farrar said: “It’s very, very sad but it’s a sign of the times. It’s the world’s oldest chapel in continuous use, even if that’s only for the next few hours.
“When you think that in 1860, Newbiggin had a population if the neck end of 1,000, it’s amazing.”
Revd Ruth Gee, Past President of Conference, led the final service. She explained that it was time to “move on from this place”.
She used the analogy of the monks who carried St Cuthbert’s bones as they escaped from the Vikings on Lindisfarne. By doing so, she explained how those present should look at the chapel’s end – by carrying their message with them.
She said: “To build this chapel was an act of faith and a commitment to serve the people of that time and of that place. It was a good decision.
“The community on which this chapel was built has changed. The miners are long gone and few people live here and most of them do not come to this place. But you have done well. You have been faithful and this place has served its purpose on the way to its final destination. As you leave, you can be certain God goes with you.”
Local historian Lorne Tallentire read from a bible belonging to an old leadminer, before worshippers sang Amazing Grace.
There were once chapels at Forest, Forest and Frith, High Force, Bowlees, Newbiggin, Middleton, Mickleton and Harwood. Middleton’s survives – its building has been reinvented for the 21st century.
The baton of world’s oldest chapel has now been passed to High House, Ireshopeburn.
Any hopes of turning Newbiggin chapel into a museum or providing another use for the church were dashed by a chronic lack of parking.
The building’s many artefacts have been catalogued and will be distributed to places including the planned faith museum in Bishop Auckland.
Keith Pearce, a Methodist minister who served Teesdale until he retired in 2012, remembered fondly the Christmas carol services, which were once described as a sport in their own right.
Those singing festive songs had to juggle their hymn books, hit the right note and grab mince pies as a plate was passed from along the pews.
Mr Pearce said: “Membership may have been small but those kind of services attracted people from all over the place. Everyone squeezed into the pews.”
Middleton-in-Teesdale resident Lee Stevenson recalled the late 1970s.
“One Christmas, the snow was waste deep and people were struggling to get out. We walked from Bowlees but we found the chapel jam-packed,” he said.
As he and the 60-odd others left that evening, each was handed a postcard of the chapel with the words of John Wesley on the back: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the time you can, to all the people you can.”
And with that, the story of Newbiggin chapel was over.