[2] He took a position in Downham Market, near Sandringham House, as assistant and tutor to the children of Dr. James Patterson, originally of "Ballymore, County Antrim"[1] [sic, most likely Ballymoney].
His father was unconcerned, but mother was not sympathetic, with the result that he went as a Non-subscribing Presbyterian ministry student to the newly founded Queen's University Belfast, where he read Theology under Dr. Henry Montgomery and the Rev.
[2] He tutored the children of cotton baron John Leech of Gorse Hall in Cheshire for nearly four years, then briefly served as minister of a Presbyterian Church at Newtownards.
A portion of city Section 302 on Wakefield Street was made over to the church by Dr. William Everard for a very modest sum,[a] and the corner stone was laid on 23 December 1856.
He officiated at many weddings in Wakefield Street, not all participants being Unitarians; secular Jews such as members of the Solomon family being a case in point, and most likely marriages between Catholics and Protestants, which in those days would not be countenanced by either.
[4] Catherine Helen Spence, who had been a regular member of the congregation from its inception, preached her first sermons at Wakefield Street in 1878 and filled in at the pulpit during Woods' occasional absences between 1884 and 1889.
He resigned in 1887 after attendance at the evening service had dropped away to a considerable extent and a dispute arose as to the cause,[1] (an alternative explanation was that it was on account of his declining health)[2] but it was two years before a suitable replacement was found in the Rev.