Oasis Coffee Shop Winkleigh
Winkleigh Methodist Chapel in middle of this pretty Devon village. It suffered from a very low attendance prior to 2009. Then a young farming family started attending the Chapel.This family have a farm shop as part of their business. Around that time a semi retired baptist minister, Graham Warmington and wife Sue moved into the village. The West Devon Methodist Circuit team enocuraged by the local minister Rev John Leach approached Graham and propoased that he could be employed part time for by West Devon Methodist Circuit for ministry in Winkleigh and North Tawton. This he agreed to.
Graham says ‘When deciding how we would begin our community involvement in the village we noticed that the little tea shoppe in the village had closed, but re-opened in October 2009, but by this time our plans were so far advanced that we could not go back on them.’ We got permission to convert the Sunday School into a Cafe with a kitchenette and repaint the area and equip as a cafe.
Graham says ‘We took several months planning both the ambience and the way in which we would operate, and because of previous experience tended to realise some of the problems we might encounter’
They Started trading in January 2010 on Mondays only 10.00am to 1.30am (so as not to take trade against current tea shop in village as it is closed on that day ) offering cakes, coffees and teas and light lunches. They Focused on the local produce from the farm shop etc .
Benefits of the project have been the raising of the profile of both the chapel and the community of faith within the village as folk drop in for light refreshment and a chat to friends and neighbours. When I was there 2 cyclists had stopped off for lunch.
One of the spin offs has been a ‘Messy Church’ being set up using the cafe room
Also the Citizens Advice Bureau use Church on a fortnightly basis when Cafe is operating for their Rural Outreach advice service which is proving very useful to local residents
There is a monthly 5.30pm ‘Sunday tea service’ a worship and and now a regular Sunday School. There is also a Circuit Youth Alpha which is running at the Church and recently a Mission Shaped Intro course was run for a dozen people who wanted to know about the latest developments and thinking in fresh expressions.
In 2012 permission was granted to remove the majority of the pews in the Church in order to be able to extend the community use of the building. Work commenced in Spring 2013 and the congregation had its first service in the newly refurbished chapel on Easter Sunday. Congregations now are often in the region of 40 to 50 people.
For Further information please visit www.westdevonmethodists/oasis
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WinkleighChapel?fref=ts