Below is the introduction from the publication booklet, the inscriptions from which have now been uploaded to the AWFHS Research Database.
FOREWORD
The Wharfedale Family History Group originally transcribed the Addingham Wesleyan Chapel Memorial Inscriptions in 1981/1982 but did not publish them at that time. I have recorded the Addingham Wesleyan interment registers this year and as a result of the knowledge gained from that exercise have also upgraded the M.I. transcriptions up to the present time. The original transcripts have been re-worked to show the plot numbers and resultant locations with a little more accuracy. In this edited version, Verses… etc that have no genealogical value are omitted.
Brian Clayton
September 1996
HISTORY OF METHODISM IN ADDINGHAM
Notes prepared in 1986 by the late Mrs Kate Mason, Reynard Ing, Addingham Moorside.
Religious dissent in Addingham started in the mid seventeenth century with a small group of Quakers who met at Upper Gatecroft and at a meeting house at Farfield Hall, where they had a burial ground. It was however to be the followers of Wesley, and the Haworth parson, William Grimshaw, whose preaching inspired many local men such as Tom Lee and Tom Illingworth to follow their example.
Preaching on the Methodist principles started about 1744, and in 1748 a society of Methodists was started in the village. By 1788 the society was able to build a chapel. The society grew as the population expanded so that: by 1808 an enlargement was necessary. The same year Addingham became the head of a new circuit. The chapel was enlarged again in 1834, since when its appearance remained unaltered until its final closure in 1973, when the school, provided and managed by the Methodists, was converted into their chapel, and the former chapel was sold and converted into flats.
The burial ground was provided by George Oates Greenwood a local landowner, who lived at Netherwood House, just over the parish boundary in Ilkley. The Greenwood family Mausoleum stands in the centre of the burial ground. Mr W. Lemmon states that the earliest burial entered in the Register of Burials is not until 1844. *
Besides the Wesleyan Methodist society there was an Independent chapel, which seems to have had only a short life, and was probably Congregational in persuasion. The Primitive Methodists started preaching here about 1821. Their first chapel was above the Oddfellows Hall (now demolished) on Lodge Hill, but they held many open air meetings. In 1913 they were given a plot of land in Main Street. This chapel was closed in 1955) and later converted into the Village Hall. The Methodist Reform Chapel, Mount Hermon, was built in the 1860s and still has a faithful following. How far these other sects used the Wesleyan burial ground is not clear until further research is done on the Methodist records at Sheepscar in Leeds.
For a fuller account of the Wesleyan Methodists in Addingham reference should be made to ” Methodism in Addingham” by W. Lemmon.
* The first interment was that of Thomas Beck, Stonemason, in January 1844.