Location

The first record of Methodism in North Common is found in the journal of the Rev. John Wesley. The entry for Tuesday October 13th 1761 reads:

"I preached at Newgate, at Kingswood in the afternoon, and in the evening at North Common. Here a people are sprung up, as it were, out of the earth, most of them employed in the neighbouring brass works. We took a view of these next day, and the one thing I learned there, the propriety of the expression(Rev. 1.v15), "His feet were as fine brass, burning in a furnace. "The brightness of this cannot easily be conceived. I have seen nothing like it, but white clear lightning.””

The brass works referred to by the Rev. John Wesley was situated at Warmley Tower, less than a mile from the present North Common Chapel. William Champion, a Quaker industrialist, who in 1743 patented a process for the manufacture of zinc from calamine, built it. Mr. A. Braine in his book "History of Kingswood Forest" describes the scene thus,

"Altogether, the Works at Warmley Tower must have appeared very like a considerable town. The large furnaces were arranged in lines, facing each other, not unlike houses in a street, there being several lines thus formed together, also with a row of cottages for the workmen."

We learn from "The Bristol Brass Industry" by Joan Day that there was also a large windmill and several large steam engines for ore crushing at Warmley Tower. It is said that Champion imported Dutch workmen to assist him and perhaps some of them were among John Wesley's hearers at North Common.

At the time of the building of the chapel at North Common (1879) the area was predominantly rural and the people responsible for its erection would have been farm workers, miners and shoe workers. There was a small chapel already in existence on the outskirts of the village at Cann Lane. It was named "Salem" and was erected in 1871. Little is known about the origins of this building but it appears to have been an Evangelical Nonconformist congregation.

Of the present North Common Methodist Church we have only the following reference taken from "Wesley and Kingswood and its Free Churches" by the Rev. George Earys in 1911. Writing about local Primitive Methodist Chapels, he says:

"The Bristol Fourth Circuit has also churches at Oldland Common, Warmley Hill, North Common and Speedwell. At all these there are the characteristic devotion and evangelistic effort which are associated with Primitive Methodism." In spite of Earys' record, there exists a persistent local tradition that the building of North Common Chapel owes much to the inspiration of Primitive Methodist ‘Missionaries’, who travelled from Brinkworth, in Wiltshire, and held cottage meetings in local homes. Brinkworth was a ‘power house’, at that time, of Primitive Methodism.

North Common Chapel became a part of the wider Methodist Church at the time of the Methodist Union in 1932. Up to 1939 the church had a large congregation at all services, a large Sunday school and a strong choir. The church was opened most nights of the week for different meetings, Band of Hope, Christian Endeavour etc. Alas, with the coming of the war, most of the young men were called into the forces, which seemed to take the heart right out of the church. However, we thank God that many returned safe and well, but as the years passed the young people married and settled in different areas. The congregation, as in other churches, dwindled. By 1979 there were only 25 to 30 members and about a similar number of Sunday school scholars, with a junior club held during the week.

In 1969 the church was renovated to its present state. The pews were replaced by chairs and the platform lowered. Many a time a preacher had knocked his head coming up the steps onto the platform and one actually knocked himself out, but happily recovered in time to take the service. At the time of the church renovation, it was planned that a large hall should be built, but this did not come to fruition.

North Common church was closed for services in 2004 and sold for development in 2005.