Goodshaw Baptist - The Old Chapel

Goodshaw Lane, Goodshaw Chapel

The first Baptist meeting house at Goodshaw was started in 1685, probably at the house of Henry Butterworth or in his blacksmith shop. Meetings were also held in the barn of John Pickup of Loveclough.  Goodshaw Baptist Chapel owes its existence to a group of people from Lumb who though attached to no particular religious sect held meeting in farmhouses and cottages around the villages of Whitewell Bottom, Lumb and Dean. They eventually came under the influence of the Rev Joseph Piccop the minister of Ebenezer Baptist, Bacup and about 1753 built a meeting house at Bullar Trees near Lumb. After seven years this house proved to small and very inconvenient, as most of the members by now came from Goodshaw. So in 1760 the first chapel was built at Goodshaw with people carrying the pews and fittings from the Lumb meeting house on their backs over the moors to Goodshaw. And for the next seventy years the people of Lumb tramped over Swinshaw Moor every Sunday for service. Lumb eventually got its own Baptist chapel around 1830 and this is still in existence today. The chapel at Goodshaw continued to grow and in 1809 a Sunday School was built adjoining the old chapel. By the 1860s the old chapel was becoming to small, so it was decided to build a new chapel lower down the hill on the Burnley Road. The trustees of the church handed the old chapel over to English Heritage, and in 1976, after being unused for over one hundred years,  work commenced on a full restoration with the chapel being re-opened to the public in July 1985. As well as being a local tourist  attraction the Chapel is opened once a year for the Anniversary Service.  

The old Baptist Chapel, Goodshaw Chapel - date of photographs unknown

Photographs of the inside of the Chapel

Memorial Tablets