Barnabas Shaw Tombstone Location

The story of the Central Methodist Mission (CMM), Cape Town began at the turn of the last century. Methodism first came to South Africa with the British soldiers stationed in the Cape Colony. The first Methodist convert in South Africa was a soldier by the name of John Irwin. He wrote: I found out four or five men of the other regiments who met together and were called Methodists. We hired the use of a very small room in the town for two hours in a week, to hold a prayer meeting: there we read, sang and prayed, at length I got faith.

It has also been recorded that Sergeant John Kendrick of the 21st Yorkshire Light Dragoons, a Methodist local preacher, conducted services at the Cape in 1806, and that John Middlemiss was the first Methodist leader. He told in a letter dated 16 September 1807 how, in 1806, he and a few other Christians… ‘tried to trace the Methodists or any that were striving to work out their own salvation among the regiments at the Cape. About forty-two Christians were traced – a few of these were ‘sincere Methodists’.

These early meetings and services were held in adapted buildings: a hayloft above the stable in Plein Street and a disused wine store in Barrack Street. In 1822 a church a mission house was erected (also in Barrack Street) at a cost of £600. Dr. John Phillip conducted the official opening and the building served as both a school and a church.

A key figure in the church in Cape Town at this time was the Rev. Barnabas Shaw who arrived in Cape Town in 1816. Together with the Rev. E. Edwards and the Rev. T. Hodgson, Shaw played a major role in the growth of the church in Cape Town and this culminated in the erection of the Wesleyan Methodist Church on the corner of Burg and Church Streets in 1829 (Methodist House now stands on this site). A memorial tombstone in memory of Barnabas Shaw, who is regarded as the founder of South African Methodism, can be found on the ground floor beneath the gallery at the back of the existing church.