200 years of worship

1:57pm Thursday 13th March 2008

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IN the early part of the 19th century, Congregationalism was growing apace throughout the country - and it was no different in Burnley.

In the latest edition of Retrospect, the Burnley and District Historical Society journal, the Rev David Wiseman takes a look at the bicentenary of worship at Bethesda Street.

It all began as thousands of newcomers flooded into the town from the early 1800s, and a group of people hired a room over William Pate's shoemaker's shop, in Goodman Hill, later St James's Street.

This row subsequently became the Empire Buildings in 1926.

The first minister for this fledgling church was George Partington and when he arrived in 1807, Burnley, although little more than a village, was described as a licentious place' with many profligate characters'.

Evangelism was the name of the game in those distant years and the Rev Partington preached during the week in Colne, Whalley and Harwood.

And so it was in 1810 that, as the cause in Colne prospered, he moved there to care for a new flock.

Burnley's first Bethesda Chapel opened in 1814 and, under the guidance of the Rev Thomas Greenhall, whose ministry lasted 33 years, a Sunday School, with as many as 200 children, and a day school were opened.

Then followed a period of dispute and acrimony, with a breakaway group forming the Salem Congregational Church in 1850, until the church appointed the Rev John Stroyan and his wife, Elizabeth, to the town.

Their first impressions of the town, however, were less than favourable.

The couple considered the climatic conditions of the area dismal and lugubrious, and the church unattractive, yet they stayed and settled, although another splinter group moved on to found the Westgate Congregational Church in 1861.

In 1869 a mission school was founded for the less privileged children of the town in Keighley Green and, in the 1870s, the church opened an iron school' in the neighbourhood of Bethesda, sometimes referred to as the ragged school.

The whole town mourned Mr Stroyan's death in 1877, although his wife continued to work among the poor, the children, and prisoners.

When she died in 1902, the town named a street after her, off Lyndhurst Road.

A new Bethesda Chapel opened in 1879, where electric lights arrived in 1914 and the Girls' Guild, which still runs today, in the 1920s.

During the Second World War, the handsome iron gates and graveyard railings were removed for the war effort.

Since then ministers have included the Rev Arthur Curtin, who retired in 1958, the Rev Alan Coles, and the Rev Clifford Holgate, who spent 50 years in the ministry There has also been unity among the four Congregational churches of Bethesda, Salem, Hollingreave and Westgate, and the formation of the Burnley United Reformed Church.