Pradnack Wesleyan Methodist Association Chapel

I am grateful to Jo Lewis for identifying the location of the chapel at Pradnack, recorded as having been registered for public worship by the Wesleyan Methodist Assocation, and subsequently by the United Methodist Free Churches.

“I think Pradnack is very likely to be Predannack Wartha Chapel

The 1840 Tithe Map records the chapel as belonging to the Wesleyan Methodist Association (formed the late 1830s). By 1851, Predannack Wartha was a sizeable village of 13 dwellings with land and nearby tenements. It is recorded that the Methodist Chapel fulfilled the needs of this agricultural community of 130 people. The UMFC formed in 1857 and the 1867 return notes a Pradnack Chapel “Association Chapel’ now United Methodist Free Church in then Helston Circuit.
In 1906 the chapel was renovated with an engraving on one of the stone steps marking it ‘A Christian Endeavour 1906’. In 1907, the Anniversary of the Predannack Chapel was celebrated with a Service and Sermon by a visiting Preacher followed by a Public Tea which included music by the local Mullion Brass Band and a Public Meeting in the evening. (West Briton 1907 et al). If this was the 100 year anniversary this dates the chapel to the early 1800s.”

Jo has added to this story, with photographs of the chapel, in a page on Mapping Methodism

This is confirmed by the returns from ‘the religious census of 1851’. There are two returns for the chapel, H.O. 129/309/62 signed by Sam. Pearce, the Steward, and a duplicate H.O. 129/309/63 signed by J.W. Gilchrist, the minister. They agreed that it was a Wesleyan Methodist Association chapel, erected “about 1840” and that it could accommodate 100 people. they also agreed that on the 30th March 1851 50 worshippers had been present: the Steward stating that it had been an evening service, and the minister, and afternoon one. Samuel Pearce is recorded in the 1851 population census as being a farmer at High Predannack. ten years later he framed 24 acres at Predannack Wartha.

The story after then is more complex, as this article from page 5 of Royal Cornish Gazette of April 26, 1906 shows.

“The old chapel at Pradnack, Mullion, which was frequently used some years ago by the United Free Methodists, but which has been closed for some considerably time owing to the decrease in the population, has been taken in hand by the members of the Christian Endeavour Society, and has been re-seated and thoroughly renovated at a good deal of expense. At the re-opening services a few days agosome of the older inhabitants were forcibly reminded of the days of yore, when mining was in full swing and places of worship were largely attended.”

The Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour was an interdenominational Christian youth society. There is no record of the chapel being in Methodist hands in the later nineteenth or the twentieth centuries.