Our Circuit's History
 
By 1746 John Wesley had divided his growing number of societies into seven circuits or "rounds".  That year, Astbury (adjacent to Congleton) was taken into John Bennet's Round, which included societies in Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Lancashire.  By 1752 the Cheshire societies became part of the Manchester Circuit.  As further expansion took place, circuits were divided and subdivided and, in 1770, Congleton became part of the Macclesfield Circuit, in 1803 becoming itself the head of an extensive circuit which, in 1809, also took in Biddulph.  
 
The first English ‘camp meeting’, held on Mow Cop on 31 May, 1807, was part of a chain of events which, at a meeting in Tunstall in 1812, led to the formal constitution of a separate Primitive Methodist denomination and their first circuit, based on Tunstall.  Congleton had its own Primitive Methodist Circuit from 1838 and Biddulph [at that time known as Bradley Green] from 1878.
 
Notwithstanding the Methodist Union in 1932, the circuits remained as they were until 1969, when they were rearranged into two new circuits. These were
(a) the Biddulph and Mow Cop Circuit, which incorporated the Biddulph Circuit, the Biddulph section of the Congleton Wagg Street Circuit, and part of the Congleton Kinsey Street Circuit, plus
(b) the Congleton Circuit, comprising the Congleton section of the Wagg Street Circuit and the remainder of the Kinsey Street Circuit.
 
In 2009, the Congleton and Biddulph Circuits joined to form the Mow Cop, Biddulph and Congleton Circuit.  And then in 2011 the Mow Cop, Biddulph and Congleton Circuit and the Middlewich Circuit joined to form the Dane and Trent Circuit.