The Primitive Methodists - 1807

Hugh Bourne

In 1806 a charismatic and controversial American revivalist, Lorenzo Dow, introduced the idea of open-air evangelistic meetings to Britain. Dow’s description of ‘camp meetings’ fired the imagination of a Staffordshire Methodist, Hugh Bourne, a carpenter and wheelwright, but the Wesleyan Methodist authorities considered such gatherings ‘highly improper’.

William Clowes

Despite this discouragement, the first British ‘camp meeting’ was held on the rocky hill of Mow Cop near Stoke-on-Trent on 31 May 1807. Bourne was expelled from Wesleyan Methodism and joined another local Methodist, the potter William Clowes, to form ‘Primitive Methodism’, so called because they saw their open-air evangelism as a return to the authentic ways of early Methodism.

The ‘Prims’ grew into the second largest Methodist denomination in Britain, with a reputation for being a working-class ‘peoples’ church’.

Listen to 'Come and Taste Along with Me' played on the 1828 Silsden organ at Englesea Brook Chapel and Museum of Primitive Methodism: Click here

An open-air service at Mow Cop in May 2005

More information on the
Primitive Methodists

List of Primitive Methodists
200th Anniversary events

Celebrating Primitive Methodism
A Service of Praise and Prayer