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
Internally, it is clean, ornate, and substantial. Its gallery has
stronger supports than can be found in any other Preston chapel. If
every person sitting in it weighed just a ton it would remain firm.
There are two front entrances to the building, and at each end red
curtains are fixed. On pushing one pair aside, the other Sunday, we
cogitated considerably as to what we should see inside. We always
associate mystery with curtains, "caudle lectures" with curtains,
shows, and wax-work, and big women, and dwarfs with curtains; but as
we slowly, yet determinedly, undid these United Methodist Free
Church curtains, and presented our "mould of form" before the full
and absolute interior, we beheld nothing special: there were only a
child, two devotional women, and a young man playing a slow and
death-like tune on a well-made harmonium, present. But the "plot
thickened," the place was soon moderately filled, and whilst in our
seat, before the service commenced, we calmly pondered over many
matters, including the difficulty we had in reaching the building.
Yes, and it was a difficulty. We took the most direct cut, as we
thought, to the place, from the southern side--passed along the
Market-place, into that narrowly-beautiful thoroughfare called New-
street, then through a yet newer road made by the pulling down of
old buildings in Lord-street, and reminding one by its sides of the
ruins of Petra, and afterwards merged into the Orchard. To neither
the right nor the left did we swerve, but moved on, the chapel being
directly is front of us; but in a few moments afterwards we found
ourselves surrounded by myriads of pots and a mighty cordon of
crates--it was the pot fair. Thinking that the Orchard was public
ground, and seeing the chapel so very near, we pursued the even
tenour of our way, but just as we were about sliding between two
crates, so as to pass on into the chapel, a strong man, top-coated,
muffled up, and with a small bludgeon in his hand, moved forward and
said "Can't go." "Why?" said we; "Folks isn't allowed in this here
place now," said he. "Well, but this is the town's property and we
pay rates," was our rejoinder, and his was "Don't matter a cuss, if
you were Lord Derby I should send you back." We accused him of
rudeness, and threatened to go to the police station, close by; but
the fellow was obstinate; his labours were concentred in the
virtuous guardianship of pots, he defied the police and "everybody;"
and feeling that amid all this mass of crockery we had, for once,
unfortunately, "gone to pot," we quietly walked round to the bottom
of the ground, for the crates and the pots swamped the whole _place,
came up to the chapel door, within four yards of the Lord-Derby-
defying individual, and quietly went into the building.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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