Cross Street Chapel is a Unitarian

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chri ...

in central

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It is a member of the

General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (GAUFCC or colloquially British Unitarians) is the umbrella organisation for Unitarian, Free Christians, and other liberal religious congregations in the United Kingdom and Irelan ...

, the

umbrella organisation An umbrella organization is an association of (often related, industry-specific) institutions who work together formally to coordinate activities and/or pool resources. In business, political, and other environments, it provides resources and ofte ...

for British Unitarians. Its present minister is Cody Coyne.

History

The

Act of Uniformity 1662 The Act of Uniformity 1662 (14 Car 2 c 4) is an Act of the Parliament of England. (It was formerly cited as 13 & 14 Ch.2 c. 4, by reference to the regnal year when it was passed on 19 May 1662.) It prescribed the form of public prayers, adm ...

imposed state control on religion by regulating the style of worship in the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

. However, many clergy rejected the restrictions, and of the 2000 ministers who were ejected from the

established church A state religion (also called religious state or official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular, is not necessarily a t ...

Henry Newcome Henry Newcome (November 1627 – 17 September 1695) was an English nonconformist preacher and activist. Life Henry Newcome was born at Caldecote, Huntingdonshire, the fourth son of Stephen Newcome, rector of Caldicote. He was baptised on 27 ...

established his own congregation that same year. The "Dissenters' Meeting House" was opened in 1694 and holds a special place in the growth of

nonconformism Nonconformity or nonconformism may refer to: Culture and society * Insubordination, the act of willfully disobeying an order of one's superior *Dissent, a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or entity ** ...

within the city. In 2012, the chapel became the first place of worship to be granted a

civil partnership A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage ...

licence when the law changed in England. During the construction of

Manchester Metrolink Manchester Metrolink (branded locally simply as Metrolink) is a tram/ light rail system in Greater Manchester, England. The network has 99 stops along of standard-gauge route, making it the most extensive light rail system in the United Ki ...

's second city crossing in the City Zone, 270 bodies from what used to be the chapel's graveyard had to be exhumed and reburied. The work took place from 2014–17.

The Chapel

The building was renamed the Cross Street Chapel and became a Unitarian meeting-house c.1761. It was wrecked by a Jacobite mob in 1715, rebuilt and destroyed during a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

air raid in December 1940. A new building was constructed in 1959 and the present structure dates from 1997. The ''Gaskell Room'' of the new building houses a collection of memorabilia of

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire ...

Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many st ...

Notable ministry and congregation

Urban historian Harold L. Platt notes that in the Victorian period "The importance of membership in this Unitarian congregation cannot be overstated: as the fountainhead of Manchester Liberalism it exerted tremendous influence on the city and the nation for a generation." * Sir Thomas Baker *

William Fairbairn Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet of Ardwick (19 February 1789 – 18 August 1874) was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder. In 1854 he succeeded George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson to become the third pre ...

William Gaskell William Gaskell (24 July 1805 – 12 June 1884) was an English Unitarian minister, charity worker and pioneer in the education of the working class. The husband of novelist and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell, he was himself a writer and poet, and ...

* James Heywood *

Eaton Hodgkinson Eaton A. Hodgkinson FRS (26 February 1789 – 18 June 1861) was an English engineer, a pioneer of the application of mathematics to problems of structural design. Early life Hodgkinson was born in the village of Anderton, near Northwich, Ch ...

* James Kay-Shuttleworth, 1st Baronet *

* Thomas Potter * John Henry Reynolds * Thomas Worthington

List of ministers

1662–1695 *

John Chorlton John Chorlton (1666, Salford – 16 May 1705, Manchester) was an English presbyterian minister and tutor. Life John Chorlton was born at Salford in 1666. On 4 April 1682 he was admitted to be educated for the ministry at Rathmell Academy under R ...

1687–1707 * James Coningham 1700–1712 *Eliezer Birch 1710–1717 *

Joseph Mottershead Joseph Mottershead (1688–1771) was an English dissenting minister. Life The son of Joseph Mottershead, yeoman, he was born near Stockport, Cheshire, on 17 August 1688. He was educated at Attercliffe Academy under Timothy Jollie, and afterwards ...

1717–1771 *Joshua Jones 1725–1740 *

John Seddon John Seddon is a British occupational psychologist and author, specialising in change in the service industry. He is the managing director of Vanguard, a consultancy company he formed in 1985 and the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method'. Vanguar ...

1741–1769 *Robert Gore 1770–1779 * Ralph Harrison 1771–1810 * Thomas Barnes 1780–1810 *John Grundy 1811–1824 * John Gooch Robberds 1811–1854 *John Hugh Worthington 1825–1827 *William Gaskell 1828–1884 *James Panton Ham 1855–1859 *James Drummond 1860–1869 *Samuel Alfred Steinthall 1870–1893 *Edwin Pinder Barrow 1893–1911 *Emanuel L.H. Thomas 1912–1917 *H. Harrold Johnson 1919–1928 *Charles W. Townsend 1929–1942 *F.H. Amphlett Micklewright 1943–1949 *Fred Kenworthy 1950–1955 *Reginald W. Wilde 1955–1959 *Charles H. Bartlett 1960–1967 *Kenneth B. Ridgway 1969–1971 *E.J. Raymond Cook 1972–1987 *Denise Boyd 1988–1996 *John A. Midgley 1997–2008 *Jane Barraclough 2008–2014 *Cody Coyne 2014–present

References

External links