St Mary's Street Wesleyan Methodist Church, Preston in the County of -- Lancashire --

St Mary's Street Wesleyan Methodist Church
in the Town of Preston

The following is reproduced from "Our Churches and Chapels" by Atticus (A. HEWITSON) and was printed at the "Chronicle" Office, Fishergate, Preston. 1869. The Lancashire Online Parish Clerks Project wish to acknowledge Project Gutenberg who have made this and many other books freely available.

"When shall we three meet again?" We can't tell--don't care about knowing; you have met now; and keep quiet, if possible, whilst being vivisected. There are worse companions, so shake hands, and sigh for universal bliss. We shall use the dissecting knife with a kindly sharpness. The first of the places named is situated in St. Mary's- street, opposite a very high wall, which we believe is intended to prevent men from scaling it, and is closely associated with the arrangements of the House of Correction. One hundred yards off, it looks like a high, modernised, seaside hotel; fifty yards off, it seems like a well-arranged gentleman's residence, in the wrong place; two yards off, it indicates its own mission, and clearly shows that something embracing both education and religion is carried on within it. It is a large, well-built, quadrangular building, with two round-headed ranges of windows in front, and a good roof above, surmounted with an iron rail, put up apparently for imaginary purposes. Nobody has yet got over that rail so far as we have heard; and if the job is ever attempted, nothing will be found on the other side worth carrying home. The foundation stone of this building--it is really a school chapel--was laid on Good Friday, 1866, and the place was opened in the same year. The place cost 2,500 pounds, and it is nearly out of debt. Internally, it is full of rooms. On the ground floor there are nine apartments--all well disposed, appropriately fit up, and set apart for general scholastic and class purposes. On week days, some of them are used as school- rooms, the average attendance of pupils, who are carefully looked after, being about 120; and on Sundays they are devoted to "class" business. In a large room above, children are also taught on Sundays: the general attendance on those days throughout the place being about 450. This school-chapel owes its existence to the cotton famine. During that trying period, when people had nothing else to do but think, live on 2s. a week, and grow good, Messrs. Wilding and Strachan generously opened a room connected with their mill in New Hall-lane, for secular and religious instruction. It was attended mainly by those belonging the Wesleyan persuasion; in time it became too little; and the result was the erection of a school-chapel in St. Mary's-street. We have never seen a better arranged nor a more commodious place of its kind than this. Its class, and ordinary scholastic departments we have alluded to. Let us now proceed above- -into the room used for worship. You can reach it from either the northern or the southern side, but from neither can you make headway without ascending a strong, winding series of steps, which must be trying and troublesome to heavy and asthmatic subjects, if any of that sort ever show themselves at the building. The room is large, lofty, clean, and airy, and will hold about 400 persons. Just within each doorway there is a box, intended for contributions on behalf of "sick and needy scholars." But both have been put too near the side; they often catch people's clothes, on entering, and as everybody is not disposed to stop and exercise the organ of benevolence, whilst the remainder wish to be judicious about the business and save their dresses, it has been decided to shift them inwards a little. From the centre of the ceiling, gas burners, in star-shaped clusters, are suspended, and when the taps are on they give good lights.

The congregation, which is generally constituted of working-class people, numbers about 350. The people attending this place are a quiet, devoted lot, with patches of pride and self-glorification here and there about them, but, on the whole, kindly-looking and sincere. Some of them are close-minded and intensely orthodox; but the majority are wide-awake, and won't pray for fair weather until it has given over raining. The members of the choir sit on the eastern side, and if not so refined and punctillious in their musical performances, they are at least pretty strong-lunged and earnest. They are located near the wall. The harmonium-player enjoys a closer proximity to it. He manipulates with fair skill, has a clock right above him, and ought, therefore, to keep "good time." If he doesn't, then let the clock be condemned as a deceiver and incumberer of the wall. The pulpit is a broad, neatly-arranged affair--fixed upon a platform at the southern end, and environed with rails of blue and gold colour. Just within, and on its immediate left, there is a small paper nailed up with four nails, and containing, is written English, these words, as a reminder for each preacher during his "supplications"--"Pray for God's ancient people of Israel." "Does this mean the Jews?" said we to an elderly man near us, whilst we were scrutinizing with a plaintive eye, the pulpit, and he replied, "Bleeve it does." That, we thought, was a bad speculation for a chapel containing two subscription boxes for "sick and needy scholars." The man who wrote out that exhortation in the interests of Petticoat-lane men and their kindred, and the patriot who drove with a fierce virtue the four nails into it didn't, we are afraid, know clearly how much it costs to convert a genuine Jew, else more caution would have been exercised by each of them. A Jew's eye is a costly thing; but a Jew's conversion is much more expensive; you can't get at the thing fairly for less than 10,000 pounds; and as five good Wesleyan Chapels could be built, in ordinary districts, for that sum, we advise Wesleyans to go in for chapels and not for Jews.

If the pulpit had not been a broad and accommodating one, in St. Mary's-street Chapel, we should have been inclined to think that the parson might have had a "walk round." There is just space enough in front of the pulpit for a medium-sized gentleman to pass between it and the front rails. In a moment of high dudgeon, a thin preacher with a passion for "action" might easily flank off and traverse it frontally; but an easy-minded individual would find plenty of room in the pulpit, and if he did not, presuming he were stout, he would have to "crush" considerably in order to accomplish a full circular route. Beyond and in the immediate front of the pulpit rails there is a circular seat. This we fancied, during our inspection, was the "penitent form"--it seemed close and handy during a season of stern excitement and warm eruption; but in a moment we were told it was for "sacrament people," who patronise it in turns, on particular Sundays. Two services are conducted on Sundays here by regular and itinerent preachers; the former coming from Lune-street Chapel, and the latter being furnished out of the general lay body. Nearly every night throughout the week, class meetings, &c., are held in the building, and they are conducted with much rapture and peacefulness. How the Jew-converting business gets on we cannot tell--badly, we imagine; but in respect to the ordinary operations of the place they are successful and promise to be still more so. A chapel whose members branched off from this place has been established at Walton. About 12 months ago it was opened. A cottage situated on the road side leading to the church constitutes the walhallah of Methodism there, and the support accorded to it is increasing. We have no more to say as to the St. Mary's-street mission. We hope it will go on and agreeably grapple with the people in its own district whatever may become of the Jews.