Pole Lane Chapel, Darwen

I participated in a peculiar outdoor service this month, in an old cemetery under some dark trees. We were marking the ministry of the Rev. Henry Townsend on the site of Pole Lane Independent Chapel in Darwen, which existed from 1793 till 1822. Itself a secession from Lower Chapel, its deacons later physically removed their pastor, rather ignominiously, from his pulpit in 1806, for reasons which are unclear. He and several supporters went on to found The Refuge, or Townsend Chapel, which was eventually renamed Ebenezer when it was enlarged and amalgamated in 1822. The building is long gone, with only a few graves remaining, one of them belonging to an aforementioned deacon who expelled the pastor.

The service was arranged by Rev Townsend’s 4x great-granddaughter, whose late mother had begun to research the family’s and chapel’s past. She was in part wishing to respond to some of the unkind speculation offered regarding the reason for her forbear’s dismission from his ministry. The reason suggested on the day by Simon Hugill, a local Methodist and historian who gave an overview of the site’s past, was the deacons’ disapproval of Townsend’s marriage plans, rather than some financial impropriety or drift to heterodoxy.

In many respects, those heady days were the apogee of English nonconformity, and Darwen was a town in which those who dissented from the Church of England may have been the majority. Yet it is clear that preaching the gospel was not always their primary focus: there were scores to settle, animosities to satisfy and personalities to indulge. That a preacher of the gospel, who had served his previous congregation in Cockermouth with affection and distinction, should have been forcibly ejected from his pulpit, seems to be an indictment of an earlier Congregationalism. That a town’s chapels should have been competing rather than cooperating in the Great Commission seems bizarre. Independent, nonconformist congregations often attracted ambitious, self-made and self-sufficient individuals, the type who prospered in business, lent energy and vision to local government, and provided a large pool of candidates for the Liberal Party’s elections. Sadly, this spirit also created tensions and rivalries within their chapels, of which the affairs of early nineteenth-century Darwen here testify. Perhaps it is sadly apt that the site of their chapel is now empty, save for the tombs of the dead upon which sit decaying leaves and broken twigs.  

We sang unaccompanied the Old Hundredth and Isaac Watts’ O God our Help with the help of a fiddler, two modes of music with which Henry Townsend’s generation would have been familiar. Both songs had been sung on that spot in 1893 when a similar service of commemoration was held. In addition, the local URC minister read from the Authorised Version's Ecclesiastes 3 (‘There is a time and season for everything…’) and a fine, baritone soloist gave a rendition of Blake’s Jerusalem, with all its references to those dark Satanic mills, of which Darwen had its share. I spoke on the meaning of Townsend’s Calvinism (We have all sinned, God continues to draw people to Himself, Christ died for us, God’s call is not easily thwarted, and God’s people are wonderfully sustained) as well as applying Solomon’s reflections to the present day: 'a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones'. I also suggested that, as Hosea 12:10 declared, it was time for those present to seek the Lord, for no-one knows how long he has left before he faces the judgement.

It is time to seek the Lord.