Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
The edifice wherein our Unitarian friends assemble every Sunday, is
an old-fashioned, homely-looking, little building--a tiny,
Quakerised piece of architecture, simple to a degree, prosaic,
diminutive, snug, dull. It is just such a place as you could imagine
old primitive Non-conformists, fonder of strong principles and
inherent virtue than of external embellishment and masonic finery,
would build. It can be approached by two ways, but it is of no use
trying to take advantage of both at once. You would never get to the
place if you made such an effort. There is a road to it from Percy-
street--this is the better entrance, but not much delight can be
found in it; and there is another way to the chapel from Church-
street--up a delicious little passage, edged on the right with a
house-side, and on the left with a wall made fierce with broken
glass, which will be sure to cut the sharpest of the worshippers if
they ever attempt to get over it. What there really is behind that
glass-topped wall we are at a loss to define; but it is evidently
something which the occupier of the premises apprehends the
Unitarians may have an illicit liking for? If they want to get to it
we would recommend the use of some heavy, blunt instrument, by which
they could easily break the glass, after which they might quietly
lift each other over. Recently, a small sign has been fixed at the
end of the passage, and from the letters upon it an inference may be
safely drawn that the Unitarian Chapel is somewhere beyond it. To
strangers this will be useful, for, prior to its exhibition, none
except those familiar with the place, or gifted with an instinct for
threading the mazes of mystery, could find out, with anything like
comfort, the location of the chapel. Whether the people have or have
not "sought for a sign," one has at any rate been given to them
here. A small, and somewhat neat, graveyard is attached to the
chapel; there are several tomb-stones laid flat upon the ground; and
in the centre of it there is a rather elaborate one, substantially
railed round, and surmounting the vault of the Ainsworth family. The
remains of the late W. Ainsworth, Esq., a well-known and respected
Preston gentleman, are interred here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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