Christ Church Ainsworth

Christ Church stands on the site of Cockey Chapel, for centuries the only building used for public worship in Ainsworth. The present church dates from a rebuilding of 1832, after which Ainsworth was given its own ecclesiastical status.

The Cockey Chapel congregation

The chapel has an unusually tangled history. Records show that by 1647 the trustees of Cockey Chapel were Presbyterians, as was the greater part of the congregation, and so were its ministers. For a time the building housed a Church of England service in the morning and a nonconformist one in the afternoon — an arrangement that appears to have continued even after the 1662 Act of Uniformity forbade any worship other than that of the established church.

The strength of Presbyterianism on Cockey Moor was such that in 1672, under the Declaration of Indulgence, a Mr John Lever was licensed to preach at a new meeting house on the moor. The two traditions eventually parted company: the nonconformists went on to build their own chapel on Knowsley Road, which survives as Ainsworth Unitarian Chapel, while Cockey Chapel remained Anglican and became Christ Church.

Sources: Victoria County History of Lancashire, vol. 5 — Ainsworth; Ainsworth Unitarians.