Our History - Bowdon Vale 

Our blue sign was installed in January 2019.

Methodism in Bowdon began in a modest chapel in Chapel Walk in 1788. Soon too small for the growing congregation, a new chapel was sanctioned at the Circuit Meeting on March 34th 1852.  In 1855 half an acre of ‘Bell Clapper’ field was purchased from Mr James Atkinson West and the foundation stone of the first Bowdon Chapel was laid on 4th June 1856.  Opened on March 25th 1857, the chapel was Gothic in style, built by Mr Thomas Penk of Manchester from a design by Mr Simpson of Leeds.  It seated 300 people and the entire cost, including the organ, was £1 9784 12s 6d.  From this chapel three mission groups were formed: the Sunday school, Hale Road Mission and Primrose Cottage Mission.  It was the latter which transferred to the building on Priory Street in 1883.

The building on the Bell Clapper field was outgrown by the congregation and the Bowdon Dome Church, seating 900 was opened in 1880 and demolished in the 1960s.