About ten miles from Cowslip Green was the picturesque village of Cheddar, the population of which was sunk in ignorance and depravity.  The incumbent lived at Oxford, and the curate at Wells, twelve miles off.  There was but one service a week, and no pastoral visitation whatever.  There were thirteen parishes in the neighbourhood without even a resident curate.  Drunkenness and utter inefficiency prevailed to a terrible extent amongst the clergy in this district; whilst education was a question that never troubled either the clergy or the people.

At Cheddar Hannah and her sister Patty opened a school; and in a short time nearly 300 children attended regularly.  The sisters had to combat strong prejudices amongst the farmers.  By dint of much persuasion and flattery the opposing forces were at length won over, even to hearty concurrence.

Masters and mistresses were procured for teaching reading, seeing, knitting, and spinning, and giving religious instruction on Sundays.  A second school was shortly opened in an adjoining parish, the vicarage-house, which had remained uninhabited for a hundred years, having been put into repair for the purpose.

During 1790 Miss More published a volume entitled, An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World.  The book was quickly bought up, and within two years reached a fifth edition.  The prevailing indifference to vital religion, the corruptions of society, the decline of domestic piety, and the absence of religion from the education of the upper classes were the themes treated by the writer with unsparing candour and convincing force.

Encouraged by her success at Cheddar, Miss More, with her sister Patty, went further afield, and selected two mining villages on the top of the Mendip Hills as the next scene of her labours.  The difficulties here were even greater than those at Cheddar.  The neighbourhood was so bad, we are told, that no constable would venture to execute his office there.  Friends warned the Misses More that their lives would be in danger if they persisted in their project.  The people imagined that the sisters had come to make money by kidnapping their children for slaves.

Undaunted by obstacles and perils, the workers persevered, until in no less than ten parishes schools were commenced, which, before long, were attended by 1200 children.  In every parish the acquiescence of the incumbent was first obtained before proceeding to open a school.  At the evening meetings, to which adults were invited, a simple sermon was read by one of the sisters, and also a printed prayer and a psalm.  Few mistresses could be found who had not owed their religious impressions to Wesleyan influence; and thus Hannah More was subsequently, though mistakenly, thought to be a Methodist.  Although influenced by the Methodist revival, she always considered and professed herself to be a member of the Episcopal Church.