Muston (pronounced Musson) is a small village in the Vale of Belvoir, about 10 miles north of Melton Mowbray.
No dissenters were noted in 1676,[1] or 1706.[2]
The houses of William Goodacre and John Pickering were registered for Protestant worship in 1778.[3]
Although no response survive to the meeting house return of 1829, a Wesleyan Methodist chapel had been built in the village in 1802, with 50 free and 7 other seats. By 1851 a Wesleyan Reformed congregation was meeting there; they did not provide details of the numbers attending Sunday services on 31 March 1851, but provided average figures of 40 for an evening service and 43 for a morning Sunday school, adding ‘the agitation among the Wesleyans has caused great variation in the congregation’.[4] The chapel was described as Methodist Free Church in 1863,[5] and had become a United Methodist chapel by 1908.[6]
Notes
[1] A. Whiteman, The Compton Census of 1676: A Critical Edition (London, 1986), p. 340
[2] J. Broad (ed.), Bishop Wake’s summary of visitation returns from the diocese of Lincoln, 1706-1715. Part 2, Outside Lincolnshire (Huntingdonshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire) (Oxford, 2012)
[3] ROLLR, QS 44/1/2
[4] TNA, HO 129/427/49
[5] White, Hist. Gaz. & Dir. Leics. (Sheffield, 1863) p. 374
[6] Kelly’s Dir. (1908) p. 538