2.00pm, Tuesday 29 April 2025
Meeting point: Dean’s Park, by the north-west tower of the Minster
Bob Hale will reprise a walk first offered some years ago, charting the first hundred years of Wesleyan Methodism in York. Although John Wesley preached at Acomb in 1747, he was almost 50 before he first came into the city in 1752. However, travelling constantly and indefatigably around England and Wales until his mid 80s, he returned on some two dozen further occasions, preaching in neighbouring towns and villages, and encouraging, inspiring and closely supervising local Methodism’s rapid growth.
Our walk, starting at Dean’s Park, will take in the several places where he preached in York, mostly still there but drastically altered, some long gone. Fifty years after Wesley’s death, his followers here built a “Cathedral of Methodism” in St Saviourgate, the magnificent Centenary Chapel of 1840, designed to seat 1500 people, now known as Central Methodist Church. Here the walk will finish.
Bob Hale left teaching to train as an archivist. He held posts at the Record Offices in Beverley, Reading and Sheffield before retiring to York. For twelve years he served as honorary archivist of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and he currently leads a group transcribing local medieval Latin documents.
Meet at 2.00pm in Dean’s Park, by the north-west tower of the Minster. Sturdy shoes and rainwear advised.