Bert Bissell MBE (9 January 1902 [1] – 2 November 1998) was a mountain climber and peace campaigner.
Born at Dudley, Worcestershire, in January 1902, he founded the Young Men's Bible Class at Vicar Street Methodist Church in the town in 1925. The bible class remained at the church for 83 years, relocating to nearby Dixons Green Methodist Church after 31 August 2008 due to the building's deteriorating condition in spite of local opposition to its closure.
Bissell, who worked as a probation officer, led a pilgrimage party from the Bible Class to the summit of Ben Nevis on VJ Day in 1945 and constructed a "Peace Cairn", in later years the subject of some controversy. [2] The expedition from Dudley to Fort William was repeated annually thereafter, a tradition which continued for some 50 years and was revived in 2014. [3]
At the age of 88, he opened Dudley's new Milking Bank Primary School on 6 November 1990, a year after it first opened to pupils.
He was the subject in 1995 of a biographical article by Stan Hill in The Blackcountryman magazine. [4] In 1997 he published a book, "God's Mountaineer" (Methodist Publishing House, ISBN 1-85852-085-1).
He died in November 1998, aged 96, at Nethercrest Nursing Home in Netherton after fracturing his pelvis in a fall at his home in Selborne Road, Dudley the previous spring. His funeral was held at Vicar Street Methodist Church on 10 November and he was buried in the churchyard at Glen Nevis.
In 2001 a limited edition book, "Bert Bissell Remembered", with contributions by 60 local writers, was published by Fairway Folio. A monument to Bert Bissell stands in Coronation Gardens, Dudley. [5]
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the British Isles. The summit is 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 739 kilometres. Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William.
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christian tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within Anglicanism with roots in the Church of England in the 18th century and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, and today has about 80 million adherents worldwide.
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelicalism. The present denomination was founded in 1968 in Dallas, Texas, by union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. The UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley in England, as well as the Great Awakening in the United States. As such, the church's theological orientation is decidedly Wesleyan. It embraces liturgical worship, holiness, and evangelical elements.
Dudley is a market town in the West Midlands, England, 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of Wolverhampton and 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Birmingham. Historically part of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. In the 2011 census, it had a population of 79,379. The Metropolitan Borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen, had a population of 312,900. In 2014, the borough council adopted a slogan describing Dudley as the capital of the Black Country, a title by which it had long been informally known.
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The Bible Christian Church was a Methodist denomination founded by William O'Bryan, a Wesleyan Methodist local preacher, on 18 October 1815 in North Cornwall. The first society, consisting of just 22 members, met at Lake Farm in Shebbear, Devon. Members of the Church were sometimes known as Bryanites, after their founder.
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Rev. Luke Booker LL.D., FRLS was an English Anglican clergyman, poet and antiquary, with a long list of published sermons and poetry. As a cleric he was strongly linked with the town of Dudley, then an exclave of Worcestershire.
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Ben Boucher (1769-1851) was an English poet who described life in Dudley in the Black Country during the 19th century.
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Peter Williams was a prominent leader of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism in the eighteenth century, best known for publishing Welsh-language bibles and bible commentary.