Barnes Healing Church facts for kids

The Barnes Healing Church is a special kind of church located on White Hart Lane in Barnes, London. It follows Christian Spiritualist beliefs. This means people there believe in connecting with spirits and receiving messages from them. The church holds services on Sunday evenings with a guest medium. It also has Wednesday evening sessions where people practice clairvoyance, which is the ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through means other than the known human senses.

A Look Back: Church History

The land where the Barnes Healing Church stands today was bought in 1867. A student named Josiah Mee, from the Wesleyan College on Richmond Hill, helped collect the money for it. The church officially opened for worship in April 1868.

Changes Over the Years

In 1906, the leaders of the Methodist Church decided to sell the church building. Members of the church congregation bought it and changed its name to the Barnes Primitive Methodist Church. Later, in 1949, the church rejoined the main Methodist Church group.

However, the church was again declared no longer needed by the Methodist Trust. In December 1966, a man named Sidney Ernest Wiles bought the building.

The Healing Church Begins

Sidney Ernest Wiles then started the "Barnes Healing Church" as a Christian Spiritualist Church. He ran it for 28 years. The church closed in 1994 when he passed away at the age of 96.

For the next nine years, the church remained closed. It was renovated using money from Wiles's estate. In 2003, a special type of business called a limited company was created to manage the church. The Barnes Healing Church reopened its doors in April 2003. Today, it is run entirely by volunteers who give their time to keep it going.