Cramlington, Northumberland
West Cramlington Primitive Methodist Chapel
Last Updated:
2 Sept 2024
Cramlington, Northumberland
This is a
Place of Worship
55.075379, -1.586518
Founded in
Current status is
Demolished
Designer (if known):
Site is now a public park
'The Primitive Methodist Magazine for February 1851 includes a description by Thomas Smith of the opening of the Primitive Methodist chapel at West Cramlington.
West Cramlington was a cluster of houses around a colliery to the east of Cramlington itself. The Ordnance Survey map 1858-80 series shows both Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels there. The Prims had previously met in a colliery building, then in a small upstairs room – so small the “poor children were parboiled in it”. In 1850 the colliery owner rented a site to the society cheaply and society members built the chapel themselves after work. It cost £131, and at the time of opening, all but £40 had been raised.
The chapel is still there on 1919-1922 maps, but has disappeared (along with all the colliery houses) by 1962.'
- myprimitivemethodists.org.uk
Listing Description (if available)
In the first edition further above from 1864 we see the Prim Methodist Chapel, newly built in the past decade, just under the colliery. The site is clearly built to serve the miners and their families that lived nearby the colliery. The site was quite isolated with countryside on every corner, but close to the Newcastle to Berwick Railway to the west.
It is a similar scene on the second edition, with the only difference being a change of name of the Public House in South Cramlington. Its rural nature stayed similar until its development as a new town.
The Ordnance Survey in 1924 shows the Colliery still in use and the Methodist Chapel in situ. Interestingly, it is evident that the settlements built up in the area rely heavily on the collieries, as the owners will have built the dwellings around it to make it easiers for miners to get to the collieries. West Cramlington, Klondyke and East Cramlington present this perfectly, as microcosms of how important the mines were to South East Northumberland.