A brief look back at the places of worship in a South Yorkshire mining village In the 19th century Carcroft was a quiet little farming community, part of the parish of Owston. The parish church in Owston served the spiritual needs of the community. An indication that this was central to parish life is the fact that the churchyard is the home of the war memorial. In the mid 19th century the village began to grow and in 1850 a small Methodist Chapel was built, later to become ‘Dick Smith's’ or the Merevale Stores, a row of cottages behind it was Chapel Street.
As the population expanded, the Wesleyan Methodists built the large and imposing chapel on Skellow Road, (close by where the Co-op built their shops and opposite the present day Asda store ). The chapel had a splendid organ and the rear wall of the choir stalls was actually a folding screen which could be opened to extend the chapel space to include the schoolroom. This is the chapel where my parents married, I was baptised, was a choir-boy and ‘organ-pumper’ (no electric pump) and preached my first sermon here; so it was a sad day for me when it became a timber merchants. In 1932 The Methodist Union took place, but the chapel retained its name as the Wesley Chapel and it was many years later that it united with the former Primitive Methodist chapel on the corner of Station Road (more about that shortly). As will be seen in this picture from Google Maps it is in quite a sad state today.