Originally there was a chapel on the opposite side of the road, but this closed in 1925 when the current building came into use.
The building is red brick with stone dressings. It was designed by George Baines and Sons in Gothic-Revival style, with perpendicular windows featuring bar tracery. It has a square bell tower with a weather vane on top.
It was built for the Primitive Methodists, a 'branch' of the Methodist movement that looked back to the practices of their founder John Wesley; they "saw themselves as practising a purer form of Christianity, closer to that of the earliest Methodists". The grouping originated in an all day, open air camp meeting in The Potteries in 1807, and it had a strong focus on preaching (they were also known as 'Ranters') with a network of travelling sermon leaders (the Ravensdale church being part of the New River circuit). The chapels were relatively plain and the services made minimal use of ritual. The movement had a strong working class base, was more democratically organised than many religious denominations and spoke out for social justice, with many ministers becoming involved in politics.
In 1932 Primitive Methodists joined with Wesleyan and United Methodists to form the Methodist Church. Ravensdale Methodist Church is still active today.
Look for a foundation stone to the left of the door. Let the date on which Brian and Joan Maynard laid the stone be AB/CD/EFGH (in the format dd/mm/yyyy). The cache can be found at
N51 34.(A+B+E)(F-E)D W000 04.(E+G)CH
Checksum for all digits is 40
Congratulations to kathwood2003 for a quick FTF.
My thanks to Professor Xavier for reviewing and publishing the cache.
Sources:
https://www.myprimitivemethodists.org.uk/
https://georgebainesarchitect.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/ravensdale-methodist-church-ravensdale-road-stamford-hill-north-london/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Methodism_in_the_United_Kingdom
*****************************************************
If you would like to add to the Church Micro series yourself then please visit
http://churchmicro.co.uk/
There is also a Church Micro Stats & Information page that can be found at
http://www.15ddv.me.uk/geo/cm/index.html
*******************************************************