Hillside: From Wesleyan Chapel to St Mary’s 

For more than 120 years, the building at Hillside was a place of Christian worship in Bradley.

It began life as a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, built at the beginning of the twentieth century for a thriving congregation. Almost sixty years later it passed into Anglican hands and became St Mary’s Church.

For generations of Bradley families it was the place where they worshipped, married, brought children for baptism and gathered to say farewell to those they loved.

Its story finally came to an end as a place of regular worship in February 2026.

Bradley’s Wesleyans need a new home

Wesleyan Methodism had been established in Bradley since the eighteenth century.

The Wesleyans built their first chapel in 1815 and replaced it with a larger building in 1835. Alongside worship grew a flourishing Sunday School and a wide range of activities which made the chapel an important part of village life.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the old accommodation was no longer adequate.

Plans for something much more ambitious began in 1897.

The result was Hillside Wesleyan Chapel.

Building Hillside

The new chapel was designed to provide considerably more space for Bradley’s Wesleyan community.

It could accommodate around 270 adults, while a schoolroom beneath the main worship space provided a home for the Sunday School and other activities.

The cost of the new building was approximately £1,800, a considerable undertaking for the congregation.

Hillside represented more than a new place in which to hold Sunday services. It was intended to provide a home for the worship, education and social life which had developed around Methodism in Bradley during the previous century.

Opening day

Hillside Wesleyan Chapel opened on Saturday 1 October 1904.

It was a major occasion for the congregation and the village.

A procession made its way from the Wesleyan Day School to the new chapel, headed by the Superintendent Minister of the Skipton Circuit.

Special services marked the opening and the celebrations included a public tea.

After years of planning and fundraising, Bradley’s Wesleyans had their new home.

For the next half-century, Hillside served as a centre of Methodist worship and community life.

Two Methodist traditions

Hillside was not Bradley’s only Methodist chapel.

The village also had a strong Primitive Methodist tradition, with its own chapel on Skipton Road.

For generations the Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist congregations worshipped separately. Each had its own history, families, Sunday School and traditions.

During the twentieth century, however, the divisions within Methodism gradually began to diminish.

National Methodist union came in 1932, but in Bradley the practical question remained: what should happen to two congregations and two chapels?

Discussions continued over many years.

During the Second World War, united services provided further experience of worshipping together.

Eventually the question could no longer be avoided.

Bradley’s Methodists unite

In November 1958, members of Bradley’s two Methodist congregations met to consider complete union.

They agreed unanimously.

A united Methodist congregation would serve Bradley, but it did not need two large places of worship.

The decision was eventually made to retain the chapel on Skipton Road.

After more than half a century of Methodist worship, Hillside was to close as a Methodist chapel.

Yet the building was about to begin a second Christian life.

A new home for Bradley’s Anglicans

Bradley’s Anglican congregation had developed independently of the Methodist churches.

Its story had begun with worship in a house before the congregation acquired a tin tabernacle as its church.

By the beginning of the 1960s, Hillside offered the Anglican community the possibility of a much more substantial and permanent home.

The former Wesleyan chapel was sold to the Anglican community in 1961.

Work was needed to transform a Methodist chapel into a Church of England church. A significant contribution came from George Marshall, whose gift of £1,000 helped make the conversion possible.

The building which generations had known as Hillside Wesleyan Chapel was about to acquire a new name.

St Mary’s Church

In March 1963, the former chapel reopened as the Anglican church of St Mary’s.

The service was led by the Bishop of Bradford.

There was something remarkable about the transformation.

The building itself had not ceased to be a Christian place of worship. Instead, it had passed from one Christian tradition to another.

The pulpit, furnishings and patterns of worship changed. The building was adapted for Anglican liturgy and became the spiritual home of Bradley’s Church of England congregation.

For more than sixty years, St Mary’s served the village.

Generations at St Mary’s

For those who knew the building only as St Mary’s, its Wesleyan origins could easily be forgotten.

Yet the Methodist story remained written into the building itself.

The large worship space and the rooms beneath had been created for the needs of the Wesleyan congregation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Now new generations filled them.

At St Mary’s people gathered for Sunday worship and festivals, for baptisms, weddings and funerals, and for the ordinary week-by-week life of a Christian community.

The former Methodist chapel had become thoroughly woven into the Anglican story of Bradley.

But the story of Hillside was to take one final turn.

The closing of St Mary’s

In February 2026, St Mary’s closed for regular worship.

The final service was led by the Rt Revd Toby Howarth, Bishop of Bradford.

He was assisted by the Revd Mike Green, Vicar of Kildwick, Cononley and Bradley, together with two former incumbents of Cononley with Bradley, the Revd John Peet and the Revd Colin Penfold.

The service brought to an end more than 120 years of Christian worship in the Hillside building.

For approximately 57 years it had served Bradley’s Wesleyan Methodists.

For more than 60 years it had served Bradley’s Anglicans.

Its denominational identity had changed, but its purpose had remained remarkably constant.

Back to Skipton Road

The closure of St Mary’s did not mean the end of Anglican worship in Bradley.

Instead, the congregation moved to worship with the Methodists in their chapel on Skipton Road, the very building which Bradley’s united Methodist congregation had chosen as its home more than sixty years earlier.

Today Anglicans and Methodists worship there together.

There is a wonderful symmetry to the story.

In the early 1960s, the Methodists left Hillside and the Anglicans moved in.

In 2026, the Anglicans left Hillside and moved to join the Methodists.

One building, two traditions

Hillside's story reflects more than changes in the ownership of a building.

It tells something of the changing relationship between Christian traditions in Bradley.

A building constructed with enormous commitment by Wesleyan Methodists in 1904 later became the home of an Anglican congregation. More than a century after Hillside opened, the descendants of those different traditions now worship together elsewhere in the village.

Hillside was a Wesleyan chapel.

It became St Mary’s.

And when its long life as a place of worship finally ended, the Christian community it had served continued.

The building changed hands. The traditions came together. The story of Christian worship in Bradley goes on.