In this village, also known as Hackford-next-Reepham, Reformers seceded from the Wesleyan Society in 1850, taking with them many sympathisers from the Station Road chapel. On moving into the former Baptist chapel of 1827, just off the Market Place, they established a large following and Sunday school.
By 1858, the chapel had joined the Norwich Circuit of the newly formed United Methodist Free Churches (United Methodist Church from 1907).
Chief among the leaders was William Bircham, a tailor of Reepham and a staunch Wesleyan, albeit a reformed one. He was a founder of the Reepham Provident Society, and a local preacher who zealously assisted elsewhere in the setting up of breakaway chapels during the agitation for Wesleyan Reform in the nineteenth-century.
Following Methodist union in 1932, amalgamation with the Primitives and Wesleyans of Reepham led to the closure of the chapel (since demolished). Thus, members found themselves worshipping in the Station Road chapel from which their forebears had withdrawn some eighty years previously!
Sources include
Census of Religious Worship (Norfolk) 1851: Ed by J Ede & N Virgoe 1998
Norfolk News 29th June 1872
Free Methodist Manual 1899
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