Crumbs from the Table

Mosely Street Independent Chapel was a place of worship in Manchester which stood diagonally opposite Pimlico library on Mosely Street on the present site of the Sainsbury's supermarket.  (It should not be confused with Mosely Street Unitarian church which closed in 1835, having stood on the future site of the Manchester and Salford Bank which is now occupied by the "Betfred" betting shop.) Mosely Street Independent Chapel was a breakaway in 1788 from Cannon Street Congregational Church which had only started in 1762 (with Caleb Warhurst as minister).   Ministers of Mosely Street Independent Chapel Joseph Smith  Samuel Bradley  Dr Robert Halley The building stood from 1788, was enlarged in 1817, and then vacated in 1848 when the church moved to Cavendish Road. Here is a picture of the building: Manchester City Council holds the historic records of this church . In 1847/8, a new chapel was completed on Cavendish Road near the University of Manchester with seating...

 New York Street Baptist Chapel was a place of worship in the centre of Manchester which stood from 1808 to 1869.  The church was a breakaway from the Baptist church pastored by William Gadsby shortly after his arrival in 1805. For a time, the church met at Cold House chapel in the Shudehill area of Manchester (a longstanding place of non-Anglican worship), before moving into the premises on New York Street in 1808. The well-known pastor John Fawcett (1739-1817) of Wainsgate Chapel in Hebden Bridge preached at the opening service.  The location of the church was on New York Street which at the time of writing is on the other side of the City Tower from Piccadilly Gardens. The chapel stood in the block between Pine Street and Faulkner Street on the site of what is now the carpark.  The chapel is clearly marked on various historic maps of Manchester, such as this one (Pigot 1813):  According to Baptist church historian Whitley (Baptists of the North West, 1913), ...

 When you look through old photos of Bury, the town where I live in Greater Manchester, a recurring scene is the "Whit Walks". The pictures show crowds of people, young and old, processing with banners. In Bury, a muster point for these walks was the old Union Square which was demolished to make way in the late 1960s for what later became the Millgate shopping centre.  The origin of the Whit Walks was the Sunday school movement, which was started in 1781 by Robert Raikes in Gloucester. The first Sunday school in Manchester dates to 1784. The Whit Walks commemorate the anniversary of this movement, which provided basic education on a Sunday for children who were forced to work the other six days of the week. Dr Elmer Towns who wrote an early Raikes biography says “the early Sunday School basically aimed at teaching reading and writing with the Bible as a text book”. Many if not all churches locally ran a Sunday school teaching dozens of children every week; even our little chu...

When I moved to Greater Manchester in 2021, I was surprised to discover that the major evangelical churches, in particular City Church Manchester and Grace Church Manchester, were only recently planted. I wanted to find out about the historic Manchester evangelical churches. (This timeline focuses on non-Anglican churches.)   (1649) A Baptist congregation met on the grounds of what is now  Chetham's school of Music  during the English civil war and early Commonwealth years under the leadership of John Wigan. (1657) During the time of the Commonwealth, Henry Newcome, a Presbyterian, served as minister at the Collegiate church (now Manchester Cathedral ). Around the time of the Great Ejection in 1662, Henry Newcome's ministry at the Collegiate church came to an end.   (1670) Having been banished in 1665 under the Five Mile Act, Henry Newcome returned to Manchester and obtained a licence to hold services of worship in his home.  (1687) A barn on what is...

Our church, Radcliffe Road Baptist Church, Bury , was started in 1835. A figure who played in a key role in the formation of the church was William Gadsby (pictured right). Gadsby spoke at the inaugural service of our first church building on Bridge Street in 1836. And the "mother church", Hope Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel in Rochdale, which planted our church in Bury, had also been started by Gadsby.  While I am a conviction Reformed Baptist, I knew very little of William Gadsby and the Gospel Standard churches. Gadsby's story is that he grew up in the midlands in extreme poverty and with very little education. He was first converted in late adolescence (17), and later baptised on profession of faith at age 20. He ministered first in the midlands before taking up the role of pastor of what became Rochdale Road Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel in Manchester (picture below), where he was pastor from 1805 until 1844 (39 years). By all accounts, notwithstanding t...