History
Roll of Honour
To commemorate the men of East Leake who served in the First World War, we decided that the Roll of Honour, which is in our front garden, needed a ‘face lift’. We also decided to replace our front boundary wall and gate to enhance the setting of the Roll of Honour and the approach to our church. The new wall is of a height and design to enable passers by to sit on the wall and have a rest by the Roll.
The Roll of Honour was rededicated at a special service on Sunday 9th November at 3.00pm. It was attended by our members, the Royal British Legion, local dignitaries, and by members of families whose relatives are named on the Roll. Please view all the names on the Roll by using the East Leake village web-site where they have been listed by the local History Society.
We are interested in finding out more about the people listed on the Roll. If anyone has information about any of the names please email Roger Latham at our church – roger.86latham@btinternet.com
The work cost £10,860. We received grants from the Parish Council, the Townlands Trust and our County Councillor totalling £1,750. We were able to use two generous legacies to the church from Joan Grundy and Margaret Twombley. The remainder was paid for from church funds.
Renovations in 2009
In 2009 East Leake Methodist Church undertook a major renovation scheme costing £130,000. This was needed to underpin the extensions that had been built in the 1980s to the original building. The extensions contain the entrance hall, toilets, kitchen and vestry.
In the course of the work a well was discovered underneath the foundations of the entrance hall. Senior steward Bryan Harrison said “We’re told that it’s a farm well, about 3 metres across, and was partly filled in with rubble when the church extensions were built in the 1980s. The foundations put in then weren’t as deep as the foundations of the original 1930s church hall which is the core of our current Church. As a result the 1980s extensions have started to come away from the original building and major underpinning work is needed. As the contractors were working they discovered that some of the cracks that we’d noticed in the entrance hall, which we thought were due to subsidence, were actually because the foundations had been built across this old well.
There were several suggestions about what the Church should do with the well. Our minister in 2009, Rev Kim Goh, said “I suggested to our Church treasurer Roger Latham that I could bless the well and we could open it up as a tourist attraction as ‘The Holy Well of East Leake’”. He suggested in reply that we might be able to set up a water bottling plant and sell the contents. “I regret though” Bryan Harrison said “that we’re going to have to fill the well in to make the building secure, so these bright ideas aren’t going to happen. We do know, however, that other wells have been discovered when building works have been done in nearby properties on this side of Main Street and we wonder whether or not there is a line of them which were the original wells for the farms and houses that were on Main Street in the past.”
The work was all completed and a re-dedication service took place in 2009.
By God’s grace the whole cost of £130,000 was found partly through the church’s own efforts and partly by generous donations from a number of bodies. In particular we were helped by: The Methodist Church nationally, Rushcliffe Borough Council and Veolia Environmental Trust.
We express our thanks to them and to all others who contributed to these
The History of Methodism in East Leake has been recorded by Roger Latham and can be downloaded here as a PDF document. In his account Roger tells us the explains the circumstances and the context of Methodism in our village since 1741.
