HERITAGE Economic turmoil, a huge increase in the number of bankruptcies, the Bank of England having to issue new money, the British army’s resources fully stretched in war. No,not a description of 2009 but a summary of life in the last years of the nineteenth century. In 1789, a local yeoman called John Turner erected some buildings in the centre of Newport, some of the earliest buildings in the village.Two years later he bought the land and buildings himself but in 1793 was bankrupt losing everything except his and his wife’s clothes and one bed with its bedding. His misfortune was an opportunity for others. A group of Methodists who were already using the upper storey of one building as a preaching house, purchased the land and buildings. They continued to use the preaching house until 1812 when a house on the site was demolished and a chapel built in its place. These two buildings and the iron gates erected in the nineteenth century at their entrance are in use today. The original box pews are still to be seen in the gallery of the 1812 chapel, and the ground floor has pews from the Victorian era. In between the buildings is a peaceful graveyard which was used for part of the nineteenth century. In stating why the buildings should be listed the government department said “The Church is listed for its combined HISTORICAL and ARCHITECTURAL interest as a good example of a Georgian Dissenters Chapel dating from the late 18th century. There are not a great number of these surviving as large numbers of these were rebuilt in the following Century often in the prosperous 1860s. ORIGINAL features of the interior such as the COLUMNS, GALLERY and PANELLING give a good idea of the setting of Methodist Worship during the first decades. The double CAST IRON GATES and LAMP ARCH are interesting early appendages to the main building “. Newport itself is an industrial village, created after the draining of Wallingfen and the enclosure of the land in the 1770s. The building of the canal brought workers to the area and lead to the discovery of clay suitable for brick and tile manufacture. In 1823 there were seven manufacturers in the village producing an annual output of 1,700.000 tiles and 2,000,000 bricks. The attractive brickyard ponds and recently refurbished Old Brickyard play area on Canal Side West are reminders of those days. Come and pay us a visit to see a very special place.
		Here are some images of the Methodist Church over the years.