The End Of An Era - Lynemouth Chapel
This information is extracted from an article by Neil Taylor who writes about the history of Lynemouth Chapel, in a pit village in Northumberland, which my father James Atkinson Gotts spent many years running the Sunday School and struggling to keep it going.
“At 11-15 am on Tuesday 8 June 2010 the last service was held in Lynemouth Primitive Methodist Church. The Chapel as it was always known stands by the main road through Lynemouth and has been a place of worship in the pit village community for almost 83 years.
It was built on land given by the old Ashington Coal Company in 1925 and the money raised to pay off the loan agreed to build the Chapel was provided by the members themselves.
Some folk reading this may remember the halcyon days of the 1950s when there was a good influx of young people who filled five Sunday School classes and were members of the Youth Club run by Jim Gotts and Harry ( Sonny ) Armstrong and many joined either the Life Boys or in the girls case the Girls Life Brigade run by Edith Foster.
By the 1970s the Chapel was in financial difficulties and barely surviving. This was the time when Jim Gotts’ faith really shone through and he battled hard to save the closure. Eventually the Trustees decided that the Chapel garden which had previously been worked as allotments had to be sold off for building land. In 1984 the Rev Bernard Nixon and his wife June initiated a Day Centre in the Chapel which over the years has proved highly successful and is still in operation at the present time. The Centre was a lifeline for the older generation way back then and ensured the future of the Chapel for some time to come.”
Thanks to Neil Taylor
Burston School riots
Ian Gotts of Kings Lynn has noted that Henry Joseph 1313 Gotts in tree #034 (Bacton) were involved in the Burston school riots.
Both Henry Joseph and his wife Anna Laura were summoned and fined in 1911 for not sending their son to school at Burston on 7 April. Henry was represented by his wife, who admitted that he had not been to school, although he had been up to the school every day since. The fine amounted to 2s 6d. What came to be known as "The Burston Rebellion" was the longest strike in British history. Village schoolteachers were dismissed for helping farmworkers form a Union; the children went on strike, teachers set up a rival school and the whole affair flourished for 25 years.
For further details see this link:
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burston_Strike_School"