Hugh Bourne
In 1788, after basic training as a carpenter, Hugh moved to the nearby mining village of Bemersley (in the north-eastern fringe of the present-day Stoke-on-Trent) and was apprenticed to his uncle as a wheelwright.
[citation needed] To engage with people, Bourne developed a style of open-air preaching, combined with public confession of sin, group prayer, and hymn singing.
A chapel was established at Harriseahead and, by 1804, the religious 'revival' Bourne began in his new village had spread to the northern Potteries towns of Burslem and Tunstall and into south Cheshire.
Although Mow Cop was supposed to be a one-off, the number of conversions confirmed Bourne in his belief in the relevance and effectiveness of Camp Meetings and others soon followed.
Naturally, the ministers of the Burslem Circuit, the storm-centre of the movement, lost no time on their return in endeavouring to preserve their societies from complicity with what the Conference had pronounced to be 'highly improper and likely to be of considerable mischief'".
Thus, for the next couple of years, the societies sympathetic to Bourne (known as 'Camp Meeting Methodists') continued to remain part of the parent body but things changed in 1811.
After the Ramsor Camp on 3 June 1810 when Mary Dunnell was one of the speakers,[5] William Clowes was excluded from the Wesleyan Methodists and, in 1811, Bourne and his brother founded the first Chapel since his expulsion in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent.
In 1819 the inaugural Primitive Methodist Conference was held at Nottingham (the site of a large Camp Meeting on Whit Sunday 1816 which had been attended by 12,000) and the second at Hull in 1820.
Themes found in the extant volumes of his journal include preaching activities, remarks in support of teetotalism, Sunday schools, and Methodist politics.
Whilst there were no essential doctrinal differences with the Wesleyans, Primitive Methodism was shaped by the experience of vilification shared by Bourne, Clowes, and others.
Thus, whereas the Wesleyans concentrated a great deal of authority in the hands of their Ministers, the Primitive Methodists chose instead to trust the role of lay people.
The Minutes (widely quoted in Holliday Bickerstaffe Kendall and most histories of Primitive Methodism) say, "It is our judgment, that even supposing such meetings to be allowable in America, they are highly improper in England, and likely to be productive of considerable mischief; and we disclaim all connection with them.
Also, In the face of establishment opposition, Bourne promoted working class education, including instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, in addition to religious teaching, at the Primitive Methodist Sunday Schools.
Many early trade union pioneers were drawn from the ranks of Primitive Methodist Preachers, and a basic 'welfare state' used to operate among chapel-goers, their neighbours and families.
He is buried at Englesea Brook chapel in Weston, near Crewe, south Cheshire, not far from his home in Bemersley, near Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, north Staffordshire.
