Stathern is 9 miles north of Melton Mowbray and 19 miles north-east of Loughborough.
There were 10 nonconformists recorded in 1676 and 182 who conformed.[1]
In 1706 there were ‘no Dissenters except two or three Quakers’, and no meeting house.[2]
No response from Stathern survives to the Meeting House Return of 1829, and it is possible there were no nonconformist congregations meeting in the village at that date.
Wesleyan Methodists
The Wesleyan chapel (built in 1825) was built exclusively for worship and had free seating for 240 people and other seating for 60. On Sunday 30 March 1851 there were two services and the congregation was 63 for the afternoon service and 104 for the evening service. The averages of congregational size for the same services were exactly the same (63 and 104 respectively). The Sunday school, on the same day, had a morning class for 35 scholars band an afternoon class for 35. Again the average figures for Sunday school were exactly the same.[3] A congregation continued to meet in Stathern until at least 1916.[4]
[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), p. 774
[3] TNA HO 129/418/66
[4] Kelly’s Dir. Leics. (1915), p25