Bethel Chapel Research
The site of the Bethel Chapel, currently a motorbike repair shop on Thornes Lane, made me wonder how long it had functioned as a chapel and who used it.
The first port of call was the on-line catalogues of the West Yorkshire Archive Service, which indicated that information was held at Wakefield Archives, Margaret Street, under the category of C13, covering the period 1803-1999. This archive includes minutes of the Methodist Circuit and Quarterly meetings as well as Registers of Births and Marriages in the Chapel on Thornes Road.
The Chapel functioned as a place of worship for local people from about 1863 until 1952 and the records show the growth of the chapel congregation over the nineteenth century and then it’s demise over the twentieth century as people moved out of the area. The Chapel closed at about the time of the clearance of the area in the early 1950’s.
The records described on this page are held by West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield Headquarters. The contents of this catalogue are the copyright of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield Headquarters and Rights in the Access to Archives database are the property of the Crown, © 2001-2013
by Jo Heron 2014