Sandness

One day in July 1823, Samuel Dunn, assistant to John Nicholson, admitted twenty people to the Methodist 'Class' in Sandness. 

'I think I have not seen a more glorious work since the great revival in Cornwall in the year 1814 than there is at present in this little parish, in which there are only about seventy families, and we now have no less than eighty persons who meet in class. Under almost every sermon some appeared to be awakened, old and young, moral and abandoned characters. I trust ere long that all will catch the flame...'

By 1828 there were 1,000 Methodist members in the Shetlands.

'Samuel Dunn's Shetland and Orkney Journal 1822-25', by H R Bowes, 1976, page 43.

Thanks to Tom Lennie and his book 'Land of Many Revivals'.