Using the tracks which led over the marshes and guided by
a Plymouth man, John Wesley* walked from Plymouth to Dock for his first visit
on September 3rd 1746. He preached out of doors to the rough and rowdy
workers and it wasn't a great success. But next day, he came again, this
time with more followers from Plymouth and gradually the crowd began to
listen. It was not long before many of them
were won over by what they heard - simple religious beliefs based directly on the
teachings of the Bible. By 1751, Wesley's followers were able to
rent a private house for their worship which became known as
the Lower Room. The following year, they built their own meeting house nearby
which they called the Higher Room.
By 1775, the coach routes between Plymouth and Dock described in the
1791 Universal Directory had started up and by
1784 were running along a brand-new turnpike road. Other Dissenters who did not conform to the doctrines and customs of
the Anglican Church had begun to arrive in Dock from Plymouth and in 1781, the Baptists built their first
chapel in Dock
on land in Liberty Fields which later became the Pembrook Street Chapel.
After Wesley's death in 1791, the Methodist movement split into groups known as Wesleyans, Primitive Wesleyans, United Free Methodists and,
after 1815, Bible Christians. By the early 1820s, there were some
17 chapels in Dock catering for a population estimated at over 24,000.
This means much hard work for the family historian because all these
dissenting groups performed their own baptism services. As
these often took place on private premises and there were no laws at
that time governing registration of such events, record-keeping was, to
say the least, patchy. A number of baptismal records were transcribed into
the IGI and this is claimed to be complete but DFHS says many missing
records have been found. Stoke Church was still used by everyone for
marriages until 1837 and for
burials after that time, but as Dock grew, other Anglican churches were built and new
parishes formed with their own registers
