Wainsgate Chapel, January 2025
‘Wainsgate, Hebden Bridge, in Yorkshire, is a historic cause. It has ceased to be what Communists used to call a ‘working church’ because it is in the care of the Historic Chapels Trust but its ancillary buildings house a plethora of activities suitable to an outpost of that West Riding Latin Quarter which is Hebden Bridge’.
‘Externally the chapel is uncompromisingly wuthering, grey as the prevailing weather. It stands, in the words of its latest history, ‘in a proud position, built into a steeply sloping moorside in Old Town above Hebden Bridge’, an
ambitious structure for ‘thinly populated moorlands’, with ample ancillary accommodation. It has ‘chapel’ written all over it, northern chapel; Baptist might be added for good measure. It is not as urban as it looks and a park-like graveyard softens the wutheringness of the setting. Here was the focal point for a community linked by footpaths, tracks, and bridleways, and – to judge from the tombs in the graveyard – encompassing all the gradations that might be expected in a community’.
From Baptists in Sacred Space? Worship, Buildings, and Belonging by Professor Clyde Binfield, University of Sheffield (from Baptist Quarterly 2023, Vol. 54, No. 2, 67–89).
* * *
To find out more about the history of Wainsgate, you can download this booklet. The author is not credited, but is believed to have been written by Raymond Ashworth, choirmaster at Wainsgate from 1933 to 1974.
WHAT’S HAPPENING at WAINSGATE?
The chapel and Sunday school (now a thriving arts and community centre) and the burial ground are currently owned by the Historic Chapels Trust and administered by Wainsgate Chapel (Charitable Incorporated Organisation No.1198994). The ownership of Wainsgate is expected to pass from HCT to Wainsgate Chapel during 2025.
The chapel, which has exceptional acoustic qualities and a magnificent 1891 organ by Wordsworth & Co., is used regularly for concerts, recitals, spoken-word events, exhibitions, wedding celebrations, funeral services and celebrations of life.
The Sunday school building is still very much in use: Some rooms are used as studios by local artists and craftspeople; the main school room is regularly used for wedding receptions, wakes and other gatherings; there are also occasional community events such as workshops, walking markets, Advent celebration and Christmas singalong.
Wainsgate is also the home of Wainsgate Dances, who regularly host performances, workshops and residencies featuring dancers and choreographers from around the world, as well as daily Open Practice sessions for local people of all ages and abilities.
‘A wellspring of creativity’
Lyndsey Winship, The Guardian
The Wainsgate Chapel website has details of events held in the chapel and Sunday school.
THE BURIAL GROUND
The graveyard is still in use as a private burial ground, open to people of all religious and non-religious traditions for full burials or interment of ashes: Please contact us if you would like more information.
‘It might make one in love with death,
to think one should be buried in so sweet a place’
From the preface to Adonais: an Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821). Although Shelley’s words refer to the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome, they could perhaps just as well apply to the burial ground at Wainsgate.
Wainsgate Chapel is a member of the
National Federation of Cemetery Friends.
Wainsgate Chapel and the Wainsgate Graveyard Project are associated with the Cemetery Research Group, based at the University of York, which aims to ‘expand an understanding of current and past funeral culture in the UK and around the world’.
SUPPORT WAINSGATE
Wainsgate Chapel relies on donations, charitable funding and income from events to maintain and improve the buildings and burial ground, to ensure that Wainsgate continues to be a thriving resource for the communities who use it, and to secure a sustainable future. If you would like to:
DONATE TO WAINSGATE CHAPEL
VOLUNTEER WITH US
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Please CLICK HERE
VISIT WAINSGATE
Come, then, put off the world awhile, and tread,
With serious feet, the City of the Dead!
From Invitation, taken from Lyra Memorialis – Original Epitaphs and Churchyard Thoughts in Verse by Joseph Snow (1847)
The burial ground is open to visitors at all times. There is limited parking on Wainsgate Lane next to the chapel, and the 595 bus from Hebden Bridge station or town centre stops at the end of Wainsgate Lane. Walking time (uphill all the way) from the centre of Hebden Bridge is around 25 minutes. Please contact us if you would like to visit the chapel and Sunday school.
‘A place where all things mournful meet,
And yet the sweetest of the sweet,
The stillest of the still!’
From A Churchyard Scene by John Wilson (1785-1854)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to everyone who helped make this website happen:
Charlie Morrissey and Chris Ratcliffe – for help and encouragement in setting up my very own website. Tom Finch for his tireless work unearthing overgrown and buried gravestones. The authors of all the publications and websites that inspired and informed this project (listed in the Bibliography). Diana Monahan, Nigel Smith, Barbara Atack and everyone at Hebden Bridge Local History Society. Ann Kilbey and Pennine Horizons Digital Archive for providing many of the photographs. West Yorkshire Archive Service and the staff at Halifax and Hebden Bridge libraries. Catherine Chatham and The War Graves Photographic Project.
To all the people who have provided photographs, documents, inspiration, information and memories – the list will no doubt keep growing, and apologies to anyone I’ve missed:
Margaret Bailey Allison (Invercargill, New Zealand), Julia Baldwin, Tom Barwick, Ann Bennett, Nina Bleasdale, Chris Brown (Sacred Harp Yorkshire), Ben Brundell (British Letterpress), Gary Clay (Clay Construction), Kay Deighton, Susan Earnshaw, Lucy Evans, Diane Gorman, Elaine Greenwood, Chris Hagues (Old Town Cricket Club), Steve Holdsworth, Laura Hudson (Old Chapel House, Barnoldswick), Peter & Anne Jackson, Mark Jackson, Emma Jones, Paul Knights, John Matthews, Julia Maybury, Helen McLintock, Heather Morris, Jennifer Naylor, Tim Neal (Keighley & District Local History Society), Matthew Parker, Steve Pilcher (Historic Chapels Trust), Derek Pollard, Linda Powell, Christine Richmond, Afua Sarkodee-Adoo, Nigel Smethurst, Julie Stadnyk, Michael Steele, James W. Taylor (Wexford, Ireland), Judith Tidswell, Denise Tyas, Margaret Waterhouse, Tracy Holroyd Weltha (Kansas, USA), Eileen Whitehorn, Peter Whitham, Susan Wilkinson, Amanda Woolley, Annie Woolridge.
Cartoon by Biff
Thanks to Wainsgate Chapel for financial support towards maintaining and researching this website.
WAINSGATE GRAVEYARD PROJECT 