Stalybridge Congs

I attended a meeting of Congregational ministers at Stalybridge Congregational Church back in the spring. Originating in ‘Myles Schofield's Garret’, sometime between 1823 and 1830, it soon moved to grander premises in King and Melbourne Streets as the nineteenth century wore on. Now, thje church occupies modern premises in the town which were opened at the end of the last century. Although the style is very 1990s, some of the furnishings are clearly 1890s or earlier: a heavily upholstered minister’s chair and accompanying (and smaller) ones for deacons; a beautifully varnished communion table; an intricately carved, gothic style box pulpit. It all looks rather out of a place in an obviously twentieth-century building, yet it also bespeaks the chapel’s older, longer heritage.

Similarly, Salem Chapel might be of a late Georgian vintage (not unlike Mr Schofield’s garret) but its foci, affairs and deliberations are much, much older. We sigh at the Fall of Adam but rejoice at the Last Adam’s victory; we grieve at the bloodied cross, yet celebrate the Saviour’s empty tomb. The ancient world may fit uncomfortably under our early nineteenth-century roof, but our inheritance is much older than a mere 1,816 years after Jesus Christ.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Psalm 24:7