In September, I was fortunate enough to attend an opening day at St Mary’s Parish Church in Oldham. This was part of a heritage open day.
The church has been a central feature of Oldham for centuries. When I picture Oldham town centre, I envisage the church, stood proud overlooking the goings on of the town. As a child, I would attend the Christmas carol service held in the church. An old war veteran and friend of my mother would show us around the gravestones and tell us interesting stories about the things he remembered of the church as a child. I have very fond childhood memories of this place.
The church is dedicated to Saint Mary. It is sometimes referred to as St Mary’s, however, as a local, I have always known it simply as Oldham Parish Church.
It is a beautiful building and well worth a visit should you get the opportunity. Here is a brief post to simply share some things I learned during my visit!
Oldham Parish Church and Oldham Council claim a church has stood on the site since 1280.
Given its location, I find this hardly surprising. The current church and its tower can be seen from various locations throughout Oldham. Oldham town centre is located on elevated land. The first record of Oldham appears in a 13th-century document known as The Book of Fees. The book refers to ‘Alward of Aldholm who holds two bovates of land‘.1
There is some suggestion that the word Oldham may derive from the Anglo-Saxon word Alde denoting a prominent or a high place and holme meaning a meadow of land. The word Oldham therefore may be translated as ‘The Meadow on the Hill’.2
A Brief History of St Mary’s Parish Church, Oldham
According to Edwin Butterworth, a 19th-century local historian, local legend has it that there has been a Church on the site since Saxon times.3 Indeed, this belief is still prevalent in Oldham today. Although this claim is yet to be proven, there is definitive proof of a church on the site before the 15th century. In 1476, Sir Ralph Langely, Rector of Prestwich entered into a contract with three masons – William Hamond, Rauff Hamond and Miles Athenson to rebuild ‘the body of the church’. This indicates that before 1476, a church did stand on the site.
Based upon the description given of this pre-1476 structure, Butterworth believed the church dated back to the reign of King John (1199 – 1216).4 This estimate seems to me to be perfectly plausible given that we know there were inhabitants in the local area at this time.
The cost of the rebuild of the structure in 1476 was £28 6s 8d. The agreement between Sir Ralph and the masons was to rebuild the church which would comprise of:
four arches on each side, of hewn stone, 12 ft. wide between the pillars and 18 ft. high, with a width in the nave of 20 ft., and a cross arch at each end, that at the west ‘according for a steeple with two buttresses.’ The aisles were to be 10 ft. wide, and the outer walls 12 ft. high, with five windows to the south aisle, one at each end and three upon the side, and a door and porch. The north aisle was to have four windows, one at each end and two in the north wall, and a door, but apparently no porch. Four of the windows were to be of three lights and the rest of two lights, and there were to be three buttresses to the south aisle and four to the north.5
This sum would not be provision enough to rebuild the entire church. So parts of the old building would have remained. The building was then repaired during the reign of James I in the early 17th century and additions were made to the structure up until its demolition in the 19th century.
The Current Building
The building we see today is a relatively recent construction. On 28th May 1824, during the reign of King George IV, an act was passed entitled: An Act for Taking Down and Rebuilding the Body of the Church or ancient Parochial Chapel of Ease of Oldham, within the Parish of Prestwich-cum-Oldham, in the County Palatine of Lancaster, for providing additional Burial Ground and for equalizing the Church Rates, and other purposes.
The act explains ….
WHEREAS the present Church or ancient parochial Chapel of Ease of Oldham in the County of Lancaster, and the Tower thereof, are by Lapse of Time become very ruinous and decayed, and the said Church is not sufficiently large for the Accommodation of the Inhabitants of the Chapelry of Oldham aforesaid, (the Population having of late Years greatly increased), and the Cemetery or Burial Ground adjoining the said Church requires to be enlarged; and it is therefore expedient that the Body of the said Church and Tower should be taken down, and that in lieu thereof a new Church on an extended Site, and of larger Dimensions, should be erected, and that a new Tower thereto should be erected, or that the present Tower should be raised, repaired, and altered, and that the present Cemetery should be enlarged.6
The population of Oldham had swelled during the Industrial Revolution. Workers from around the town and indeed around the country flocked to Oldham to work in the newly built factories. The pay was often better than the wages that could be earned on the farmland. This meant that Oldham needed a bigger parish church and also a larger cemetery to bury the dead of this new increased population.
The current building which still stands today was completed in 1830. Richard Lane, a local architect from Manchester designed the building in the neo-gothic style.
The newly built church cost £30,000. Approximately £10,000 of that money was spent on the crypt structure.7
Today, the Church still serves the parishioners of Oldham. The local Blue Coat School hear mass here. Speaking to volunteers, they told me Sunday attendance at mass is unfortunately on the decline. However, the church still attracts a decent number of parishioners to their services.
Inside the Church
Upon entering the church, any visitor is immediately struck by the exquisite interior. It is one of those buildings that simply oozes history.
Parishioners take their seats in the old wooden pews. Kneeling has been made more comfortable with the modern addition of kneeling cushions. There are pews in the balcony above for special occasions and events but I was told this upper level is rarely used.
Stations around the Church tell the tale of the building and those who at one time or another held great sway over the church and the local area.
Dedications are made to and by some of those key individuals in the church’s history.
Oldham Parish Church possesses a crypt. Unfortunately, this is currently undergoing maintenance works and is closed to the public at this time. I have been invited to visit the crypt once essential maintenance works have taken place and I will update this post once I have done so. The crypt is home to the remains of the legendary Oldham Giant who I have heard tales of since childhood.
A staircase leads to the upper level and balcony referred to above. From here, you really get a sense of the size of the Church and can appreciate its majesty from this bird’s eye view.
The original 19th-century organ accompanies the choir during mass and is housed on this upper level.
The Churchyard
The churchyard is a rather pleasant and quiet grassy area. It is often used as a cut-through by locals seemingly unaware of the bodies they pass as they cross the churchyard. There is a large number of gravestones still visible today. Some date back to the early 19th century and earlier.
The churchyard is reportedly built on an old road which passed through Oldham and connected Manchester to Yorkshire. Part of this road still exists (Church Lane), however, the road is now severed by the presence of the churchyard. Apparently, this road is said to predate the Romans! Church Lane is one of the oldest roads in Oldham and a number of beautiful Georgian buildings on this road are still occupied today.
If you are in the area, Oldham Parish Church is hard to miss. It’s a beautiful old building which still stands despite all the changes Oldham is currently facing. The town centre is changing, the shops are closing and the coliseum is on the verge of demolition. Yet Oldham Parish Church endures.
For a similar post from me, see Slasher Mary and the Rockeby Venus.
- “Alwardus de Aldholm tenet duas bovatas terre in Vernet per xix.d. et medietatem unius quadrantis”. The Book of Fees, found at: https://www.melocki.org.uk/liber/PartI_1226.html ↩︎
- E. Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham, (1856), p. 6. ↩︎
- E. Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham, (1856), p. 66 ↩︎
- E. Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham, (1856), p. 68. ↩︎
- ‘The parish of Prestwich with Oldham: Oldham’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 5, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 92-108. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol5/pp92-108 [accessed 14 November 2023]. ↩︎
- https://parlipapers-proquest-com.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/parlipapers/result/pqpdocumentview?accountid=11526&groupid=103319&pgId=0b0662ae-5da0-4aa6-adb5-6093372976d8 ↩︎
- https://web.archive.org/web/20070312045737/http://oldhamparishchurch.org/html/history.html ↩︎
