Chapter 28

The Non-Anglican churches

INDEPENDENT/CONGREGATIONAL/UNITED REFORMED

The Independent Church was formed in Cockermouth in 1651, with George Larkham as its first pastor, a post he held for 49 years.

In 1651 just after the end of the Civil War, Robert Rickerby (or Ricardby) was expelled from his living as vicar of All Saints and went to teach at the free school in Crosthwaite. [1] Larkham, still a student at Oxford (and earlier Cambridge) and only 21 years old, was appointed in his place by the Northern Commissioner of the Commonwealth.

On 17 December, 1651 the church-book recorded

• “We first brake bread in the Public Meeting Place [All Saints Church] at Cockermouth,”

 

the service being conducted by Thomas Larkham, father of George. George was ordained in 1652 and at the end of his first Year married Dorothy Fletcher of Tallentire Hall, great-great granddaughter of Henry Fletcher of Mary Queen of Scots fame. Membership increased rapidly and a second church was soon formed in Broughton.

With the end of the Protectorate in 1659 and the restoration of the monarchy, Larkham was in turn ejected from All Saints “by the violence of Sir George Fletcher” and Rickerby reinstated. [2] Larkham moved about with his family and spent a time imprisoned for his Puritan principles in York Castle, but the Independent Church continued. Its members met secretly in members’ houses, as meetings of more than five persons were forbidden by law except when using the Anglican Prayer Book. They gathered at night, usually at Sister Hutton’s Hemshill or at Tallentire Hall The Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 enabled Hemshill to be registered as a church, but meetings ceased to be held there when Sister Hutton died in 1682 and were then usually held in a house at Tallentire which George Larkham had bought in 1669. There were still periods of persecution, but membership nevertheless increased.

In 1687 the Independents opened their first meeting place in Cockermouth since their ejection from All Saints. This was a converted dwelling house on the Sands which was leased to the church. In 1719 a chapel was erected and this was followed in 1735 by the building which later served as schoolroom and church hall. Meanwhile Larkham had died in 1700, aged 70, and been succeeded by John Atkinson under whom the church flourished. Some 400 people came to hear him, drawn from a wide area to this the first Congregational church in Cumberland. Atkinson at first apparently lived in a manse tucked away in a back street, for after the first ten years of his 32 years ministry the church spent £78 on “a front house for him to live in”.

Later in the century difficulties arose. A new minister introduced Unitarian teaching which split the congregation, some forming a group further up the town known as the High Meeting, those remaining in the 1735 building becoming known as the Low Meeting. [3] ‘Low Meeting’ stuck even after the two congregations came together again in 1782 and Bolton used it as recently as 1912. Unfortunately the reunion did not last. Then a very strict minister reduced the membership to 29 (in 1833), but the church later recovered to such an extent that by September 1850 the congregation was able to erect the present Gothic style building in front of the old one. Seating 500 it cost some £2200 and was designed by a Maryport man, Charles Eaglesfield. The business committee concerned with the new Congregational Chapel presented General Wyndham with a lithograph “as a small acknowledgement of their gratitude for his handsome gift of ground and cottages in furtherance of this object”. [4]

Special trains ran for the opening and 1,600 attended, of whom 700 enjoyed a Cumberland tea. [5] Two weeks later the old church behind was converted into a Sunday School, which at one time had nearly 300 scholars. Thomas Armstrong of the timber firm was at this time a deacon and superintendent of the Sunday School. He died soon after the opening, in 1853, and is commemorated by a plaque in the church.

The manse in Brigham Road was bought in the mid-1940s, recently replaced by a modem house in Laithwaite Close. Extensive repairs to the church were necessary in the mid-1970s, and plans to remodel the interior were postponed because of the high cost.

In 1972, following the union of most of the Congregational churches in the country with the Presbyterian Church, the Cockermouth church became the United Reformed Church.

In 1990/91 the 1850 church was radically altered. The building was divided horizontally. Upstairs became the church; downstairs are the John Marsh Hall (named after a leading Congregational minister and scholar, whose son was architect for the transformed building), a small chapel, kitchen and toilets, This freed the earlier building behind, which was converted into ‘bed-sit’ accommodation for some ten people who came from Dovenby Hospital, to live in the community.

Rickerby refused interment of non-conformists in the churchyard. In 1671 Mrs. Lowry gave a “piece of fair land near to Cockermouth town end” to the Independent Church for a ‘burying place‘ [6] and on May 18th of that year

• “Sister Margaret Bowes of Cockermouth, being very aged, departed this life, and was buried the next day in the new burial-ground given to the Church at the upper end of the town of Cockermouth. She was the first that was laid there, we not having the liberty, though we have the right, to lay her body in the common burying-place belonging to the Town.” [7)

 

This plot of ground, near the top end of St. Helen’s Street, became known as ‘Sepulchre Close‘ and was later used as allotments.

BAPTIST

A Baptist congregation was founded in Cockermouth by Cromwell’s soldiers and met in a building in Waterloo Street behind the present United Reformed Church, later used as a garage. [8] The nearest Baptist church is now that in Little Broughton.

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (QUAKERS)

The first Quaker meeting in the area was held in the open on Pardshaw Crags during the summer months, dividing into four groups to meet in cottages in nearby villages in winter. George Fox visited Pardshaw twice when he was beginning the Quaker movement by drawing together the many groups of ‘Seekers’ who had broken away from the Orthodox Church.

Fox first came to Cockermouth in 1653, having travelled from the Furness area. [9] He had sent James Lancaster ahead to arrange a meeting at one of John Wilkinson’s steeplehouses near Cockermouth. (Fox reserved ‘church’ for the people, hence ‘steeplehouse’ for the building.) He arrived to find James Lancaster preaching under a yew tree and was himself persuaded to go into the church to speak. He records that

• “when I came the pulpit and the house were so full of people that I had much ado to get in; and they that could not get in stood about the walls.” [10]

Larkham was one of his listeners. Fox states that a dozen soldiers were present from Carlisle, but they are more likely to have been from the Cockermouth garrison.

• “The soldiers were convinced and their wives, and continued with me till the First-day [Sunday]. On the First day I went to Cockermouth steeplehouse in the forenoon … and when the priest had done I began to speak and the people began to be rude, but the soldiers told them we had broken no law and they were quiet…. And when I had done I passed away about two miles to Brigham to another great steeplehouse of Wilkinson’s”. [11]

After a period of imprisonment in Carlisle Castle Fox returned to Brigham in 1653 and spent a whole day arguing with Wilkinson.

Most of Wilkinson’s congregation joined the Quakers and Fox wrote that in 1657

• “he had not past half a dozen left; they still forsook him and came off to Friends. And at last he had so few left that he would come to Pardshaw Crag where Friends had a meeting of several hundreds of people who were all come to sit under the Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching; and I went to this Pardshaw Crag meeting, and there he was, and three or four of his followers that were yet left behind came to the meeting, and they were all thoroughly convinced, and after the meeting was done Priest Wilkinson asked me two or three questions and I satisfied him. And from that time he came among Friends to their meetings, and became an able minister and freely preached the Gospel and turned many to Christ’s free teaching.” [12]

Fox’s second visit to Pardshaw was in 1663, on his way from Carlisle to Keswick. He “had a large General Meeting and all was quiet and peaceable, and the glorious, powerful presence of the everlasting God was with us”, [13] the men paid by the magistrates to stir up trouble having gone to the Quarter Sessions to claim their wages!

‘Fox’s Pulpit’ is formed of two blocks of limestone on the outcrop of the crags facing north. In 1672 the first meeting house was built, a lean-to against an outcrop somewhere above the present building of 1729. It was as an overflow from this Pardshaw meeting that the first meeting house in Cockermouth was erected in Kirkgate.

• “It pleased ye Lord to add to ye number of his people at ye meeting of Pardshaw that it became very large so yt for ye Accommodation & more conveniency of several ffriends there unto belonging: There was a meeting house provided in Cockermouth in the year 1688 and a meeting settled there in ye 10 mo: of ye same …. “ [14]

The Congregational Church Book records expulsions from membership of those who joined the Quakers at this time, including John Wilkinson who departed “to his great shame and infamy”. [15]

The first Kirkgate building was a simple structure with a long burial ground behind, followed in 1781 by a larger building which occupied the full width of the site. Then in 1883 the following minute appeared in the records of the business meeting for the area

• “We are informed by our Cockermouth representatives that their meeting house is in such a state that they have decided to bring before the Quarterly Meeting [a gathering of all Cumberland] the desirability of building a new one.”[16]

A new one was completed in 1884, costing £1190 with furnishings. Two main rooms seated 100 in each and had a feature common to many Quaker meeting houses – a movable Partition between the two rooms, in this case the upper half rising into the roof loft counterpoised by the lower half sinking below the floor, leaving a division some three feet high.

In 1971-2, following the discovery of dry rot, the opportunity was taken to modernise and remodel the premises, at a total cost of £10,000. When panelling was removed areas of 1884 brickwork were found inserted amongst 1781 stonework.

METHODIST

The first Wesleyan Society in Cockermouth was formed in 1763 with 19 members, in the Haworth Round of Yorkshire under Wm. Grimshaw of Haworth as superintendent. Six years later it became part of Whitehaven Circuit, which extended from Penrith to UIverston and the Isle of Man. [17]

The present Victoria Hall in High Sand Lane was the first Methodist chapel in the town. In 1796 the buildings called the Maltkins in Sandwent, with a garden and yard, were assigned to George Robinson, a Cockermouth cooper. The following year Robinson assigned to Matthew Smith, gentleman of Cockermouth, and other trustees, a newly erected building for worship by the Methodists. [18]

John Wesley (1703-1791), one of the founders of the Methodist Church, is reputed to have preached here, but the dates show that it must have been elsewhere in the town. He records in his journal 19 visits in the period 1751-88, usually on his way to Whitehaven, [19] and wrote of one visit

• “About eight I began preaching in the market house at Cockermouth. I was surprised to find several of those that are called ‘the best of the town’ there, and they were all serious and attentive; so we had a solemn parting.”

 

The Methodists left Sandwent in 1841 for a new building which is now the Town Hall, of a design common to Methodist churches of that period – square, with a gallery round the four sides, the front portion containing the choir and organ, and with a schoolroom below the church. It had seating for 850 and cost £1800. [20] The gallery was later converted into an upper floor by the UDC. The vacated building in High Sand Lane was purchased by the Town Council and opened as the Victoria Hall in 1984, providing a much-needed and well used venue for small gatherings. It is still used by religious groups on Sundays.

In 1810 the Methodist Church split into the Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists and it was the Wesleyans who built this chapel. A comment towards the end of the century was

• “There cannot be much said in favour of the present Chapel, though itis better than the one in Sand Lane; but the principal objection to the one now worshipped in is that the school under it is dark, cheerless, and difficult to ventilate.” [21]

This view gained increasing support resulting in the opening of the Lorton Street church in 1932. This was the year of Methodist union, when the Wesleyan and Primitive Churches, together with a smaller body of United Methodists (not having a branch in Cockermouth), became the Methodist Church. ‘Lorton Street’ seats 450 and has a hall accommodating 300, with a wing of smaller rooms added later. The interior of the church was redesigned in the late 1980s.

When the Wesleyans left High Sand Lane in 1840/1 the Primitive Methodists bought it for £95 worshipping there until they acquired the National School in New Street in 1885. Here, for a total cost of £1300, they had much more room· 400 seats and a Sunday School. [22] ‘New Street’ remained open after union until shortly after the war, although the churches in the Cockermouth area formed one Methodist circuit in 1937. After its closure the building was used for a time by Millers shoe factory as a training centre for machinists, then in 1982/3 it was converted into six small houses.

The Primitive Methodists for much of their history held annual ‘camp meetings’, great open air gatherings. In the 1870s such meetings were held next to the auction mart, but they moved later to Harris Park.

ROMAN CATHOLIC

Roman Catholic services were held during the earlier part of last century at the Sun Barn in the yard of the Sun Inn at the lower end of Kirkgate. The building was Cockermouth’s theatre in the 16th and 17th centuries. A priest came from Wigton once a month to say mass here. When Prince de JoinviUe and his family, exiled from Orleans, were staying in Keswick in 1846 it was to this room that they came to hear mass. [23]

In 1856 the present Gothic building in Crown Street, St. Joseph’s, was opened,. Accommodating 500, it was designed by Thomas Gibson of Newcastle and church and presbytery cost £ 1400. [24] The day school used the adjoining building until the opening of the new one on the Level in 1967, when the older premises came fully into use as a church hall. They were renovated in the early 1990s.

OTHER GROUPS

The High Sand Lane chapel, now the Victoria Hall, has been variously used – by the Salvation Army, as the Victoria Gospel Hall and by the Exclusive Brethren. In 1979 the Plymouth Brethren met in Brougham House in S1. Helen’s Street and Jehovah’s Witnesses at one time used a building in the yard of the former All Saints School in Kirkgate. There was, a few years ago, a gospel meeting in Irvings Court, off Main Street.

An evangelical group was formed in 1979, known as the King’s Church. Having no premises of its own it is at present worshipping on Sunday afternoons, in the United Reformed Church and also holds frequent gatherings in members’ homes. In May 1995, the group opened a Christian bookshop in Main Street, which also acts as a drop-in centre for its members.

SUNDAY SCHOOLS

The churches ran Sunday Schools, sometimes very efficiently, providing not only religious instruction but in their early days lessons in reading and writing. The Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School was a good example. In 1845 it published a printed eight-page booklet of rules and regulations dealing with all aspects of the School, superintendents, secretaries, teachers, children, and also the visitors responsible for visiting in each of the six areas into which the town was divided for this purpose. The school committee was appointed annually and the school had to be visited each Sunday by one member of the committee. It opened at 9.05 am. and 2.05 p.m with singing and prayer, not more than four verses of anyone hymn being allowed to be sung. Each child arriving on time received a small ticket, 12 of which were worth a penny and every quarter a reward book to the value of the tickets was given. This meant a maximum of2d. per quarter, but we must remember that this was 1845! There were other Sunday Schools from an early date. Bolton referred in 1912 to the ‘centenary’ of the Independent Sunday School as having been ‘long ago’ and the Anglican school was also quite old. The latter met on the ground floor of the old grammar school and like the others, taught reading and writing. [25] The first Sunday School in the country is attributed to Robert Raikes, who opened one in Gloucester in 1780.

On 14 August 1795 the Vestry in Cockermouth ruled that the collection taken after the Sacrament should be used only for the poor and not towards the costs of the Sunday school and that “the said school from this day discontinues unless the inhabitants think proper to subscribe what is sufficient for the support of the School”. This was only 15 years after Raikes started, so that Bolton’s statement that Sunday schools existed in Cockermouth long before they were general in England may be correct. The Church Sunday School pupils had to attend a public catechising in All Saints Church, filing in from the school through the west tower doorway (the pre-1850 church), with the churchwardens and sidesmen leading, the bells ringing, and the children suitably dressed – “the Charity girls with snowy mob caps and shoulder kerchiefs.” [26]

Wordsworth wrote of this event

“From Little down to Least, in due degree,

Around the Pastor, each in new-wrought vest, Each with a vernal posy at his breast,

We stood, a trembling, earnest company!

With low soft murmer, like a distant bee,

Some spake, by thought-perplexing fears betrayed;

And some a bold unerring answer made.” [27]

 

‘We stood’ because Wordsworth himself said the catechism in this way when he was a boy in the town.

Perhaps the most interesting Sunday School in Cockermouth was the General Sunday School, opened in 1832. It stood in Back Lane (South Street) partly across what is now Station Street, near the Tithe Barn Inn, being demolished to make way for the auction mart and to permit the continuation of Station Street into Station Road. This very commodious building had room for 400 children. Unfortunately tragedy struck on the opening day when the upper floor gave way and brought down part of the staircase wall, killing two scholars. [28]

In 1833 the General Sunday School published a 26-page booklet – its balance sheet and report for the first year. The cover carried a sketch, presumably of the school, and the following appeal to the townspeople

• “Some of the Friends or Teachers of the General Sunday School beg to say, that they intend waiting upon the Inhabitants of this Town and Neighbourhood in the course of a few days, when they most respectfully and earnestly solieit the patronage and support ofall who are disposed to favour the Institution.”

 

It was largely through the efforts of the brewer John Richardson that the school was started and he was Superintendent for about 30 years. The committee of 29 members included Rev. Fawcett and Rev. J. Lowther and many names well-known in the political and industrial life of the town.

At the end of the first Year the school had three conductors (presumably assistant superintendents), 53 teachers, 4 monitors, 237 boys and 219 girls. £339-0s-7d. was spent in the first year, £ 160-15s-4d, received, hence the appeal to the town to clear the deficit. The building had cost over £299 and as this first report stated

• “Through the signal interposition of a gracious Providence, which they will ever devoutly acknowledge, and by His blessing on your liberality, the Teachers and Children are now accommodated with a spacious and suitable building, in a pleasant, dry and healthy situation, in every way admirably adapted to the purpose of its appropriation.”

 

The report also included the appeal

• “Pious and steady Teachers, either male or female, who are disposed to assist the children of the poor, by instructing them on the Lord’s day, will be welcomed in this school.”

 

Such instruction would be in writing and reading with a bias towards Bible reading.

The Sunday School was certainly a live and active institution. It met at 9.00 and 2.00 and it was stressed that no one need be absent for want of proper clothes. At 6 pm. on Sunday a religious service was held for children, parents and friends, and a service for older children and teachers at 8 p.m. on Thursday. There was singing practice on Wednesday evening, a writing class on Thursday, and attendance on Sundays brought the privilege of attending on three evenings a week for general instruction. Pens, ink, paper. etc .. were provided by friends of the school and the ‘Society for the support and encouragement of Sunday Schools throughout the British Dominions’ gave class books for reading and other instruction. Library books, gifts to the school, might be borrowed for two weeks. Another fringe activity was the formation of sick and funeral societies, which in the first seven years acquired over 80 members.

ADULT SCHOOLS

The Quaker meeting ran an adult school, associated with the nation-wide Adult School movement, and possibly other churches had similar groups for worship and discussion, such as ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon’ gatherings which were popular at one time.