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 chapel is about five yards wide, 15 yards long, very low on one
side, and moderately high on the other. It is plain, ricketty, and
whitewashed. The side wall of the railway bridge forms one end of
it. On the northern side, there is a door fastened up with a piece
of wood in the form of a large loadstone. This door leads to the top
of a pig-stye. The "chapel" will hold about 70. When we visited it,
the congregation consisted of 35 children of a very uneasy sort, 11
men, and five women. Every now and then railway goods trains kept
passing, and what with the whistling of the engines, the shaking
caused by the waggons, the barking of a dog in a yard behind, the
grunting of a pig in a stye three yards off, and the noise of the 35
children before us, we had a very refreshing time of it. The
congregation--a poor one--consists of a remnant of the Revivalists
who were in Preston last year, and it has a kind of nominal
connection with the Orchard United Methodists. The building we have
described was formerly a weaving shop or rubbish store. Its present
tenants have occupied it about twelve months. They are an earnest
body, seem obliging to strangers, are not as fiery and wild as some
of their class, and might do better in the town if they had a better
room. They have no fixed minister. The preacher we heard was a
stranger. He pulled off his coat just before beginning his
discourse. After a few introductory remarks, in the course of which
he said he had been troubled with stomach ache for six hours on the
previous day, and that just before his last visit to Preston he had
an attack of illness in the very same place, a lengthy allusion was
made to his past history. He said that he had been "a villain, a
gambler, a drunkard, and a Sabbath breaker"--we expected hearing him
say, as many of his class do, that he had often abused his mother,
thrashed his wife, and punished his children, but he did not utter a
word on the subject. The remainder of his discourse was less
personal and more orthodox. At the close we descended the steps
carefully, groped our way out quietly, and left, wondering how ever
we had got to such a place at all, and how those worshipping in it
could afford to Sabbatically pen themselves up in such a mysterious,
ramshackle shanty.
ST. MARY'S AND ST. JOSEPH'S CATHOLIC CHAPELS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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