click to return to 
Oswaldtwistle Home & Contents

Hippings Chapel, Oswaldtwistle
in the County of
-- Lancashire --

click to return to Lancashire Home

Wesleyan Methodism came officially to Oswaldtwistle in the 1790’s with much opposition from the established Church. The early members who met in private houses were persecuted and, unless their employers were sympathetic, association with the Methodists could lead to dismissal from work. The first Wesleyan Methodist meetings were held at Stanhill and in private homes. Despite the opposition their numbers grew and the Hippings Wesleyan Methodist Chapel and Sunday School was opened in 1810.

In the early days there was a fervency amongst the Methodists that is reflected in their tendency to break away and form separate sects. Arguments over the interpretations of the doctrines often led to one group forming a separate chapel in another part of town.

In 1837 the United Free Methodists broke away from the Wesleyans at Hippings and established their own chapel and Sunday school at Stanhill. Other United Free chapels were built in Moscow Mill/ Wesley Street and John Street. The Wesleyans opened new chapels and at York Street and Spread Eagle/Blackburn Road.

Hippings Chapel and Sunday School was opened in 1810 in a conversion of an old cotton warehouse. By the late 1830’s the old buildings were now too small for the growing congregation and a new church, Mount Pleasant Chapel, was opened in 1846 at a cost of £1050 on land donated by a local factory owner, James Simpson Snr. The Sunday school continued at Hippings until it too outgrew the premises and a new Sunday school was built at Mount Pleasant in 1851. Mount Pleasant Chapel was replaced in 1984 by a new building, Rhyddings Methodist Chapel, built on the same site behind the ground floor façade of the earlier one.

Oswaldtwistle Home & Contents ©Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerks Lancashire Home