Page 10 - Moreton Village Only Book

10 Moreton Village Only

chapel were not up to the task and in 1869 the old Chapel was demolished and a new one
erected and in 1875 a front porch was added and the building licensed for marriages.

A copy of the Anniversary service sheet from the June 1872 Sunday School Service
survives. Most of the inhabitants of Moreton at the time were Methodists and the annual
Sunday School Anniversary with its services, sports and a tea for the children was one of the
highlights of the year in the hamlet.
The Mott family had been closely
associated with the Methodist Chapel from
its inception and when Isaac Mott – a local
grocer and Manager of the Chapel, Leader
of the Moreton Society of Methodists and
Sunday School Superintendent – died in
1878, the whole of the Thame Methodist
Circuit went into mourning. By 1883 there
were three local Methodist lay preachers in
Moreton – A. Grace, T. Mott and W. Thorpe
– and in 1887 the Sunday School celebrated
its Golden Jubilee and launched an appeal to
clear the remaining £70.00 debt on the “new
Chapel”. The Methodist Chapel continued
as a place of worship until 1965 and it was
converted to a private house in 1971.

By the mid 1800’s the steam railway was
the most obvious (as well as the most noisy
and most smelly) manifestation of the industrial
revolution that was sweeping through England.
October 1858: Isaac Mott with his son Thomas. The railway was built in the 1860’s and, at
one point, there were three level crossings
between Moreton and Thame. The railway must have come as something of
a surprise to the people of Moreton whose usual form of transport was foot, horse, cart or
even the dog carts that were popular at the time. A whole new world was opened up and the
railway was used to take the children on the Sunday school outing to West Wycombe. The
railway could be clearly heard in Moreton where it probably shattered the peace of the rural
backwater and probably frightened the horses – not to mention the people! Moreton may
also have seen some of the steam-driven farming machinery that was beginning to appear at
about the same time but how many of the farm labourers realised that such modernisation
would one day cost them their jobs.

The Mott Family at Rose Cottage – circa 1898.