Description:Hugh Bourne (1772-1852) is, with William Clowes, regarded as the father of Primitive Methodism.
He was born at Ford Hays Farm, Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent and was apprenticed to his uncle as a wheelwright. He joined the Wesleyan society in Burslem and became a Methodist lay-preacher. He moved away from the traditional Wesleyan form of service and started an open-air style of preaching, later developed into Camp Meetings, the first of which took place at Church Farm, Mow Cop on 31 May 1807 which attracted a crowd of over 4,000 people. These meetings were influenced by American evangelical revival meetings. Bourne was expelled from the Wesleyan Methodists later in 1807, and a few years later in 1812, the Society of Primitive Methodists was founded.
Bourne preached across England, Scotland and Ireland, and overseas in the United States, Canada. he died in 1852 and was buried at Engelsea Brook Chapel, near Crewe, Cheshire.
An engraving by Freeman from 'The History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion from its origin to the conference of 1859' by John Petty (1860).