Following their secession from the Wesleyan chapel, Reformers met from March 1851 in a preaching room set up in a former grocery and drapery shop in Aylsham.
A chapel – known as The Tabernacle – opened on 7th March 1869. The building, on Millgate Road, was designed by J Cooke of Thorpe Hamlet. He was also a preacher and gave addresses at the opening.
Rather than join the United Methodist Free Churches, members opted for membership of the Cawston Circuit of the Wesleyan Reform Union. In so doing, they kept company with a large number of like-minded folk in this Norfolk hotbed of Reform.
Unlike the United and Primitive Methodists, the Wesleyan Reform Union did not participate in the union with the Wesleyans which formed the Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1932.
Towards the end of the twentieth-century a local partnership here was formed with the inter-denominational movement, Newfrontiers. This led to the opening of Aylsham Community Church in 1992 and the closing of The Tabernacle.
The building is now a dwelling.
Sources include
Census of Religious Worship (Norfolk) 1851: Ed by J Ede & N Virgoe 1998
Norfolk Chronicle 20th March 1869
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