Bolingbroke was in power, and under his auspices the Schism Bill was introduced, the object of
which was to prohibit Dissenters from conducting collegiate institutions and schools, or even
educating their own children. At the same time it -demanded that they should be trained by the
clergy of the Established Church. The Bill was carried, loaded with reproaches, branded with the
most contemptuous epitaphs. It provoked much spiteful usage. Yet our brave forefathers laid stone
by stone until the chapel was completed
Using local stone and timber, the building was completed in 1714 and was the first and only local
place of worship until after 1739. The long windows, which replaced the original small, square
windows in 1868, finished in a graceful arch and an inner, parallel line of blue glass emphasised
their shape. A sizeable porch gave entry to the main building. Set into the outside wall was a solid
foot scraper [hopefully removing a considerable amount of the mud collected on the boots of those
crossing the fields]. The pulpit was central and set behind a baptistry in the floor of the building.
Outside there was a stable and hitch-rail where visiting preachers left their horse.
In 1721 the churchyard was opened. It contains a memorial stone to Mary Perryman who, at the age
of 7 years, died on 19th February 1783. Her father, a stonemason,, was working in the quarry in
Longwell Green [the present site of Comet, B & Q, Asda, etc] getting large slabs of stone which he
carved into head stones. One day, having got one large slab, he rested i t against his horse and cart
and went off to get another. His daughter, Mary, who had gone to the quarry with him, was playing
nearby, when something startled the horse which subsequently bolted. The slab stone fell upon her
and crushed her to death. The stone that had killed Mary became her gravestone. There is also a
gravestone in memory of two victims of cholera. The graveyard was closed in 1935.
Although the Hanham Baptists had their own chapel in 1714, there was still no church for the
colliers and other forest squatters in 1738 when a Church of England clergyman, Mr Morgan, felt
compelled to preach in the, open outside their hovels. This early field preacher is over-shadowed by
the more dynamic personalities who came to Hanham Mount early the following year, namely
George Whitfield and John Wesley, who began their open air preaching in 1739, Whitfield on
Saturday, 17 th February and Wesley on 8th April of that year.
Although both ordained ministers of the Church of England, the nearest church to Hanham was at
Bitton, and the unorthodox practice of preaching in the fields was, therefore, considered to be a
local necessity. Whitefield's journal of 4th March 1739 definitely mentions that he hastened to
Hanham Mount three miles from the City, where the colliers lived together.
In John Wesley's journal we read:
Saturday March 31" 1739
In the evening I reached Bristol, and met Mr Whitefield there. I could scarcely reconcile myself at
first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday:
having been all my life (til very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order,
that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in church.
But just a week later, on Sunday 8 th April 1739, he records:
I preached to about fifteen hundred on the top of Hanham Mount in Kingswood.
Travelling around the countryside was still dangerous in 1777. Another entry in John Wesley's
journal reads: