Before St John’s: Faith in Cononley 

Long before St John the Evangelist was built, Christian faith was already woven into the life of Cononley.

For centuries the village formed part of the enormous ancient parish of Kildwick. St Andrew’s was the parish church, and generations of Cononley families travelled there for baptism, marriage, Holy Communion and burial.

But the religious life of the village was never quite as simple as everyone belonging to the parish church. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, other Christian traditions were becoming part of Cononley’s story too.

An ancient parish

In the Middle Ages, much of Cononley was connected with religious institutions through land ownership. Bolton Priory possessed a substantial estate here, while the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John of Jerusalem also held property in the village.

The Priory's involvement came to an end with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century, while the Hospitallers were suppressed in England shortly afterwards.

But Cononley remained within the ancient parish of Kildwick. For the Church of England, St Andrew’s continued to be the parish church.

Over time, however, new expressions of Christian faith began to appear.

A changing religious landscape

By the later seventeenth century there were Quakers living in Cononley. Records from 1668 identify four members of the Society of Friends in the village.

Other forms of Nonconformity also became established in the wider parish. By the eighteenth century the religious life of Kildwick parish included Roman Catholics, Baptists and Quakers alongside the established Church.

This was a period when belonging to the parish did not necessarily mean regularly attending its parish church. By 1764 the ancient parish contained 873 families, yet only 93 people received Holy Communion at St Andrew’s at Easter.

The religious landscape was changing.

Methodism comes to Cononley

One of the most important changes came at the end of the eighteenth century with the growth of Methodism.

Around 1798 or 1799, followers of John Wesley preached at nearby Glusburn. Among those who heard them was Thomas Townend, a weaver from Cononley.

Thomas and his wife Isabel lived in Main Street, where they also sold confectionery. Their encounter with Methodism changed the way they thought about their Christian faith and about the way they lived.

Among the changes they made was a decision that they should no longer open their shop on Sundays.

Soon a small Methodist society was meeting in their home.

A chapel built by weavers

The little congregation grew.

Many of its members were handloom weavers and woolcombers. They were not wealthy people, but they decided that Cononley needed a Methodist chapel of its own.

They borrowed money to make it possible and persuaded a local landowner to sell them a small piece of ground.

Much of the work of building the chapel appears to have been undertaken by members of the congregation themselves.

The new Wesleyan Methodist Chapel opened on Shrove Tuesday 1808.

It was an extraordinary achievement for a relatively small group of working people. Their chapel represented not simply the arrival of another denomination in Cononley, but the determination of local people to create a place in which their growing Christian community could worship.

Although that building has gone, part of its story survives. Stone from the old chapel was later reused in the building now known as the Church Centre.

More Christian communities

Methodism continued to develop in different forms.

Primitive Methodists were meeting in Cononley by 1822. Their tradition placed considerable emphasis on preaching and evangelism, sometimes gathering large numbers of people outdoors for what were known as camp meetings.

Other Christian groups would also establish themselves in Cononley during the nineteenth century.

The village was becoming a place with a remarkably varied Christian life.

But there was still something missing.

There was no Church of England church in Cononley itself.

The journey to Kildwick

For Anglican worship, Cononley still belonged to St Andrew’s Kildwick.

That arrangement had survived for centuries, but during the nineteenth century Cononley was changing. Population was increasing and the village was developing through industry.

The distance from the parish church mattered too.

For the people of Cononley, going to their parish church meant travelling to Kildwick. As the village grew, the case for Anglican worship within Cononley itself became increasingly compelling.

In the 1840s that finally began to happen.

Anglican worship comes to the village

A National School was established in Cononley at New Inn Fold on land given by the Revd John Swire.

The building was intended not simply as a school. It could also be used for Church of England worship.

On 26 April 1846, the first Anglican service was held there.

After centuries in which Cononley people had looked towards St Andrew’s Kildwick as their parish church, regular Church of England worship had finally come to Cononley itself.

It would be another eighteen years before the present St John’s was built.

But the story of St John’s had begun.

A village of many traditions

The arrival of Anglican worship did not replace the other Christian communities of Cononley.

Instead, Anglicans, Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists, Baptists and others became part of the religious landscape of the village.

Sometimes those traditions competed strongly with one another. Later generations increasingly discovered ways of working and worshipping together.

That developing relationship would eventually become an important part of the story of St John’s itself.

Before St John’s

When St John the Evangelist was consecrated in 1864, therefore, Christianity was anything but new to Cononley.

Behind the new Victorian church lay centuries of Christian life: the ancient relationship with St Andrew’s Kildwick, medieval religious landowners, Quakers, Methodists meeting in a weaver's home, working people building their own chapel and, finally, Anglican worship beginning in the village school.

St John’s did not bring Christianity to Cononley. It became part of a Christian story that had already been unfolding here for centuries.