Fulneck Moravian Church
Fulneck Moravian Church and its associated settlement were established on the Fulneck estate, Pudsey, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1744 by Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a Moravian Bishop and Lutheran priest, following a donation of land by the evangelical Anglican clergyman, Benjamin Ingham.
[2] In Yorkshire, Benjamin Ingham, an evangelical priest of the Church of England, had created many small groups of fervent Christians.
Br John Toeltschig from Herrnhut on Zinzendorf's estates in Saxony visited Ingham in November 1739 but it was not until 26 May 1742 that the Moravian Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, with the support of the Fetter Lane Society, agreed to establish a 'Yorkshire Congregation' for this work.
A Moravian family by the name of Gussenbauer were sent to work in Pudsey and took up residence at Bankhouse at the western end of the Falneck ridge.
Impressed by the vista from Falneck, he decided to build a settlement there on the model of the one established at Herrnhaag in the Wetterau in west-central Germany.
This was partly because it was similar to the estate's original English name, Falneck or Falnake (a contraction of "Fallen Oak") but also as a tribute to Bishop John Amos Comenius, who had ministered to the Bohemian Brethren in Fulnek, Moravia, during the Counter Reformation.
The hall occupied the central part of the first and second floors of the building and was distinguished by a single row of tall windows.
Podmore ascribes this grandeur to Zinzendorf's aristocratic sense of style and notes that the buildings attracted a stream of distinguished visitors including "gentry, baronets, peers, MPs and the Dean of Carlisle".
"The spirit of these houses was of cleanliness and order, of work and godly conversation, of frugal living in surroundings of some grandeur, and above all of stillness".
[14] The warden of the Single Brethren's Choir at Fulneck in 1751, James Charlesworth, was a "man of superior business ability" who succeeded in raising money to help stave off the bankruptcy of the whole Moravian Church in the face of its burgeoning missionary work.
Br Charlesworth had developed a cloth weaving business for the benefit of the church and traded with Portugal and Russia.
This also was laid out with elegance and simplicity with the ground, beyond a white triumphal entrance arch, divided into four squares.
Equality even in death was marked by all occupants having a small and standard gravestone, lying flat on the earth, showing just name and dates.
In 1751 the Fulneck elders noted that their "beautiful burial ground was often the reason for deathbed requests for reception" into the Moravian Church.
[16] At dawn on Easter Sunday, the congregation would gather in God's Acre to process around the graves with music to celebrate the Resurrection and remember their faithful departed.
[19] A notable student of Fulneck School was the hymn writer James Montgomery (1771–1854), whose father had been converted by the evangelist John Cennick and became a Moravian minister.
[24] The Fulneck Seminary was transferred to Fairfield Moravian Settlement in Lancashire in 1875 as a result of a decision by the 1874 Provincial Synod.
[25] Fulneck was like the continental Moravian churches in having bands of musicians in the eighteenth century, e.g. trombone players who would anticipate the trumpet sound of the general resurrection in the Easter dawn services.
