Westhoughton - Religion

Religion

The Church of England parish church of Saint Bartholomew was completed in 1870. Its east window depicted the Twelve Apostles. On the Wednesday before Advent Sunday, 28 November 1990, the church was gutted by fire, but the tower was saved. A new church designed by architects Dane, Ashworth & Cottam was built by Laing North with Bradshaw Gass & Hope as project managers and structural engineers. It cost about £1 million. After the fire services transferred to the Parochial School. The church bought the town's redundant telephone exchange, now the Parish Hall, as a temporary worship centre until the new church opened.

The new church was consecrated on 28 October 1995. A procession from the top of Wingates into the church grounds preceded the Right Reverend Christopher Mayfield, Bishop of Manchester, entering and blessing the doorway. Nicholsons of Malvern built a new two manual organ for the church. It has 1,256 pipes, ranging from 1/2 inch to 16 feet (4.9 m). The pipes are made of tin, spotted metal (an alloy of lead and tin) and hammered lead.

John Wesley, the co-founder of the Methodist church, preached a sermon at Barnaby's Farm at Wingates in April 1784. The spot is marked by a plaque. Houses cover the site where Wesley stood, but the stone from which he preached stands outside the old Grove Lane Chapel, now Westhoughton Methodist Church's Church Hall, Wigan Road.

Services were held in the cottages opposite the farm, which became known as Methody Row before the first Methodist church was built in 1835 and the Methodist Church in Dixon Street in 1871. The Wingates Band began as the church’s drum and fife band, part of the temperance movement. The final service was held there (by then the Independent Methodist Church) on 6 May 2001 and it was subsequently demolished. Daisy Hill Methodist Church was closed and demolished in the late 1980s. The remaining Methodist church is located on Wigan Road at its junction with Grove Lane, now truncated and turned into the church car park.

The industrial north west was a focus for non-conformism, and until the 1990s there was a Church of the Nazarene in Church Street, now replaced by a block of flats named 'Nazarene Court, a Quaker Meeting House on Wigan Road, now a christian fellowship, and a Tin tabernacle off Bolton Road. There is a Pentecostal church on Bolton Road and a large United Reform Church (The Bethel) on the remaining stub of the old Leigh Road. Following the move to St. George's, The Hoskers, The old Hart Common Church and School was sold on and remains as Hart Common Church in the capable hands of the Hindley Christian Fellowship.