May we in these difficult days rejoice in and learn from the past, and with the Lord whose power and presence is always with us, go forward and in confidence play a continuing part in His great scheme.
With every prayer for God's blessing upon His work in and through you all,
Yours sincerely,
(sgd) Colin Allen
Minister
Acknowledgements
My grateful thanks to Mr. Robin Atthill for his keen interest, invaluable advice and his kind permission to use some of his material; to the County Archivist for material about James Jordan; to the Rev. Colin Allen for his loan of volumes of John Wesley's Journal, deeds and other old documents in his care; to our Trust Secretary, Mrs. Nancy Lambert, for the loan of the old Minute book; to Mr. J Siminson for taking photographs of the Chapel; and the Proprietors of the Shepton Mallet Journal for permission to quote from their account of the opening of the new Hall; to all the other members of the Oakhill Society for their encouragement and reminiscences of the past; to Mr. and Mrs. F.C. Powell for typing my original manuscript and bringing order out of chaos.
John Gilling
April 1975
Oakhill Methodist Church 1825-1975
Ashwick together with the hamlet of Oakhill was a non-conformist stronghold long before John Wesley came there first of all in 1746. There was a flourishing Presbyterian community here throughout the 18th century led by the Billingsleys, a well known dissenting family who settled at Ashwick about 1689. The most famous member of this family was John Billingsley, 1747-1811, a noted agriculturist. The Ashwick congregation, which at one time numbered about 200, moved on from Presbyterianism to Unitarianism and began to decline in the early 19th century, chiefly due to the rise in Methodism and to the fact that Ashwick, formerly a chapel of Kilmersdon, became an Anglican parish in its own right in 1826, when the parish church was re-built.
